The Blazing-World expedition to aid the Empress’s native country

The Blazing-World expedition to aid the Empress’s native country is a military intervention that moves from an appeal to protect a homeland under attack to the creation of a world-spanning tributary order. The Empress and the Duchess of Newcastle devise a route between worlds and a fleet adapted to it; the Empress then defeats the invading navies and uses control of maritime trade to compel submission to the King of Esfi. The expedition’s decisive turn is that assistance becomes dominion: the Empress declares that she seeks her countrymen’s safety rather than her own interest, yet the victory she engineers makes their sovereign the head-monarch of the world.

Causes and the plan across worlds

The expedition begins after the Immaterial Spirits tell the Empress that most nations in her native world are making war on the kingdom where her friends and relations live. The news distresses her so deeply that the Emperor notices her tears. She wants to help, but initially sees no way to send forces from the Blazing-World into her homeland. The Emperor offers the Blazing-World’s assistance and asks whether the Spirits might fight on her behalf. The Empress explains why that proposal cannot work: Spirits cannot wield artificial weapons or carry out the material labors of war, and even if they entered dead bodies, there would not be enough usable bodies to form armies. Those bodies would decay before battle, and their own souls could resist the Spirits that sought to inhabit them. The problem is not lack of will but the mismatch between immaterial agents and the physical demands of warfare.

The Emperor proposes summoning the Duchess of Newcastle, whose counsel the Empress has found useful before. The Duchess’s soul arrives at once, hears the Empress’s account, and asks for time to think. Her first proposal is to have the Fish-men search for a passage between the worlds, reasoning that if a ship has entered the Blazing-World from the other world, a ship may be able to travel back through the same route. The Fish-men find the passage, but report a serious restriction: it is so narrow that nothing larger than a packet-boat can pass, and it is sometimes frozen shut. The route exists, but moving an army through it will require a different kind of vessel.

The Duchess next asks the Giants, who serve as shipwrights and architects, whether they can build ships that travel underwater. They have never heard of the invention, but agree to try. While they work, the Empress doubts that a small force of Bird-men, Worm-men, and Bear-men could survive in the other world, where a musket might kill many birds with one shot. The Duchess urges patience and confidence in her advice, promising that the Empress will save her native country and become mistress of much of that world. The Giants succeed in building underwater ships, turning the narrow, intermittently frozen passage from an obstacle into a traversable route.

Fleet, materials, and crossing

The Duchess’s plan makes the fleet’s apparent weakness part of its design. The golden ships are not built for cannon fire and cannot engage an enemy fleet in a conventional naval battle. Though their gold hulls cannot be pierced by shot, they can be battered, boarded, and captured. The Duchess therefore assigns distinct roles: Fish-men will accompany and maneuver the ships, while Worm-men will gather Fire-stone from the Burning-Mountains. Because Fire-stone continues to burn while wet, it can set the wooden vessels of the other world alight. The Empress also brings Bird-men, who can operate in the air, while Bear-men and Worm-men travel aboard the ships. Fire-stone will serve not only as a weapon but as a source of light in the darker native world, whose stars provide little illumination.

The Empress orders a large expeditionary force, then faces a logistical consequence of her subjects’ loyalty: many ask to accompany her, and she cannot refuse all of them. She must take many ships both to transport the different kinds of subjects and to carry provisions. The Bird-men need places to rest during the journey, especially at night, so they cannot be expected to remain continuously in flight. The Empress’s consideration for their limits shapes the scale and provisioning of the expedition, even as the fleet grows beyond the minimum force required by the Duchess’s plan.

The crossing itself depends on the new ships and the Fish-men. In the short passage between the two worlds, Fish-men draw the ships underwater with golden chains. The Giants have constructed them to keep water out and provide enough air for the land-dwelling passengers, allowing the company to cross without the usual inconveniences of an underwater voyage. After passing the Icy Sea, the golden ships surface and continue toward the Empress’s native kingdom. Through their Telescopes, the Bear-men identify a large, well-equipped enemy fleet blockading it.

The destruction of the invading fleets

Before bringing the expedition into view, the Empress sends Fish-men and Bird-men to learn the enemy’s number, position, and formation. At night, she orders them to carry thousands of Fire-stones, shaped like torches or candles and wetted at their tips. The Fish-men hold theirs above the water while the Bird-men carry theirs through the air. The display makes sea and sky appear ablaze; people nearby believe the Last Day has come and fall to prayer. The spectacle is a deliberate use of the expedition’s unusual resources: it obscures the fleet’s intentions while making its arrival seem supernatural.

At daybreak, the Empress has the lights extinguished. The enemy then sees ships that appear to move without sails, guns, arms, or other familiar instruments of war. Their golden hulls have been painted dark, concealing their actual material even from observers using their best Telescopes. Faced first with the night’s flaming display and then with seemingly self-moving, unarmed ships, the enemy fleet is so astonished and frightened that it cannot act. The Empress sends a letter to the native kingdom’s general and commanders, identifying herself as a powerful princess who has come from another world to help them. She asks them to say when they want her assistance.

The native commanders take time to decide how to answer. Their competing opinions and deliberations anger the Empress, who considers returning without helping. The Duchess counsels patience, explaining that large councils are slow because their members hold different views and each seeks to speak as the wisest. When a messenger finally asks who the Empress is and how she will help, she refuses to disclose her origin but promises to appear before the navy in a shining light surrounded by fire. She sets the time for about one in the morning.

At the appointed hour, the Empress appears above the water, supported on the heads and backs of the Fish-men. Her garments of Star-stone shine, while the Bird-men and Fish-men carry lit Fire-stones through the air and above the sea. As she comes closer, she leaves the torches behind and remains visible in her garments of light. She keeps at a distance from the native ships so that her equipment will not be seen clearly and only its radiance will impress the spectators. Addressing the assembled countrymen, she identifies herself as a native of their kingdom, says that she has crossed from another world because other nations seek to destroy or weaken them, and offers her help without bargaining for her own interest. She promises to make them the most powerful nation in the world and asks only for grateful acknowledgment of her love and loyalty. She also asserts that the enemy forces at sea will be destroyed before the following night and promises support against any enemies on land.

The Empress leaves the native commanders grateful but uncertain about what they have witnessed. They disagree over whether she is an angel, a sorceress, a goddess, or the Devil appearing as a beautiful woman. The uncertainty gives way to acclaim when the expedition attacks: Fish-men bring the Fire-stones close to the enemy ships before exposing and wetting them, setting the wooden fleet on fire. The ships’ powder stores then explode, and the invading navies are destroyed in a short time. The native countrymen hail the Empress as an angel sent by God to deliver them. She does not return to the Blazing-World after this victory; instead, she resolves to make the rest of the world submit to their sovereign.

From relief to tribute and submission

The native navy’s commander informs its sovereign of the victory and of the Empress’s plan to make him the world’s most powerful monarch. The sovereign, the King of Esfi, thanks her for destroying part of his opposition but explains that powerful enemies still obstruct trade in his dominions. The Empress responds that she will burn and sink ships that refuse to pay him tribute. She sends a demand to the neighboring nations engaged in maritime trade, asking them to pay tribute to the King of Esfi; they refuse with scorn.

The Empress then orders the Fish-men to destroy foreign ships trading at sea. The disruption leaves neighboring rulers uncertain how to proceed, and they seek negotiations. The Empress will offer no terms short of submission and tribute to the King of Esfi, threatening to ruin their trade by burning their ships. The negotiations are prolonged, but the nations eventually submit. The narrative makes the basis of this victory explicit: because these kingdoms depend on sea as well as land commerce, command of maritime movement gives the King of Esfi power over the wider world.

That settlement does not end opposition. The neighboring nations soon decide that tribute has left them so constrained that they can scarcely leave their own dominions without paying a costly charge. They unite their forces again against the King of Esfi. The Empress answers by sending Fish-men to destroy the remains of their naval power, forcing most of the resisting nations to submit once more. Nations that can survive without foreign maritime trade, along with those whose trade is entirely overland, remain outside this particular pressure. The Empress gives them a further choice: accept the King’s authority or face the burning of their towns and cities. When they reject her demand, she prepares a campaign against them, distinguishing between smaller settlements to be attacked first and larger cities to be destroyed if resistance continues.

The expedition thus changes scale and purpose. Its original obstacle is an enemy blockade threatening the Empress’s homeland; its first military operation destroys that fleet. Once the King of Esfi asks for help against the interruption of trade, the Empress converts naval supremacy into compulsory tribute, then threatens inland destruction against those who can avoid maritime pressure. Her public language presents the intervention as loyalty, protection, and the defense of hereditary rights, but its consequences extend well beyond defending the kingdom: the King of Esfi becomes master of the seas and, in the Empress’s account, head-monarch of the world.

Sovereignty, care, and the expedition’s contradiction

The expedition draws on the political order of the Blazing-World while carrying that order outward by force. At home, the Empress has been advised that peace depends on unified government and that a common sovereign can prevent the disorder of competing authorities. The Duchess likewise recommends restoring one sovereign, one religion, one law, and one language, presenting unity as the alternative to faction and political division. During the expedition, however, the Empress’s power is not limited to preserving unity within her own world. She uses it to impose tribute on other nations and to punish those who decline submission. The peace promised to her native country is secured through a widening pattern of coercion.

Her conduct also combines strategic spectacle with genuine attention to particular people and circumstances. She uses darkness, fire, painted hulls, and carefully staged appearances to confuse and overawe an enemy; but she also refuses to exhaust the Bird-men with continuous flight, makes room for their rest, and transports provisions for her many subjects. Her stated wish to protect her countrymen is therefore not simply a disguise for the campaign: she risks her own tranquillity and uses the resources of her adopted world to defend them. Yet the resulting order makes the gap between that protective motive and imperial consequence impossible to ignore. The expedition’s victory delivers the homeland from its immediate naval enemies, then binds its neighboring nations to the King of Esfi through tribute and the threat of renewed destruction.