The outer worlds
Past Orrin the crossings get longer and the welcomes smaller. This issue goes out to the edge: to Veyra's geysers and its Glass Shore, to Thule, which almost nobody visits, and forty days further to the ice mountains of Mirren.
Saskia Imre maps the Lantern for beginners and talks to the keeper of Brightwater, Tomas Arkwright watches Kesh from behind a heat shield, and Ilse Marrow chases the Rose. Bring something warm.
Liora Venn joined one of the first small groups allowed into Veyra's ice cavern: a slow descent, a lake beneath clear ice, cliffs full of light and a silence nobody wanted to break.
Where to start, what to look for and how to train your eyes: a first-night route round the Lantern's regions from Brightwater, from the Twin Fires to the faint Veil.
For eleven years Mira Calloway has kept the telescopes on Veyra's dark side. She talks about Lantern nights, the cold, and why the faint real thing beats the pictures.
Nobody lands on Kesh. From a shaded lounge behind a heat shield, a former hull inspector watches the furnace world's glowing night side and explains how the pass works.
One sailing a year, forty days out and twelve guest berths at Hollin Station: aboard the Long Swan to Mirren's ice mountains, nitrogen plains and stacked blue haze.
Tessaly's orange moon hides its stars and the giant overhead. Fewer than thirty people a year go down to Amber Camp: here is what they do there, and how to join them.
At Veyra's south pole, ice sprays into space from long fractures called the Tiger Lines. A guided walk across the geyser field, the rhythm of the plumes and why you want to see them backlit.
At Tessaly's north pole, a storm called the Rose turns inside a six-sided jet stream. What it is, why the frame has six sides, why its pictures are false colour and how liners line up the view.
