Captain Maro Teha

Maro Teha is the most celebrated of the master-captains of the navigators' company and the keeper, by long election, of the sky-roads — the charted lanes by which the airships of the rings come and go. He has ridden the high winds further from the island than any other captain and returned to set down what he found before the Concord, and the safe routes he has won are flown by every packet and freighter that lifts from the Airship Docks.

His name was first entered among the distinguished after the trial of a new use of the Aegis: not for fair weather over the rings, but to raise and hold an artificial current far enough south that no ordinary sky-road could be trusted. Maro took the Tide-Swallow into that road before any chart existed for it, proved that a ship could keep station upon it, and brought his crew home with their rigging glazed white and their logbook full.

The trial became a road; the road became a schedule. Within a generation the southern packets were carrying brass, varnished canvas, lenses, medicines, instruments and guests under seal toward the white continent, and returning with ice-cut work so fine the Gallery keeps a cabinet for it. The earliest surviving note in Maro's own hand is characteristically brief: clear current, sound crew, safely made the under-ice airship dock at the other end before third lamp.

He keeps a famous ship, the Tide-Swallow, and a famous temper, and is held in equal awe by the mooring-crews and the Concord alike. Visitors who win his favour — it is not bought — may be carried up the high sky-road for the sight the whole island is built to be seen from: the rings and their bridges laid out entire, the mount and the Aegis at the centre, and the sea all round.