Accalon endeavored to stay belowdecks as much as possible, to make sure the engine isn't experiencing any difficulties.  However, he was confident enough in his skill as an engineer to leave it unattended for a short while.  

And the air of the engine room was, while as safe as could be expected, presently unpleasant.  Now, Accalon wasn't sure if he could call the Neath's air "fresh," but it was large enough to be fresher than the ash and soot below.

So equipped with his puspose and his justification, Accalon found himself under the false-night of the cavernous world he lived in.  Being up above, his attention was caught by the Captain and the Doctor speaking.  They weren't exactly close, but he'd had more than his fair share of practice listening to things he shouldn't have.

Accalon had noticed the ship's peculiar construction.  The engine, and thus his quarters, were deep in its bowels.  It would be impossible for him to not notice.  But at this point, having chased down talking cats to learn their secrets, scraped together what meager knowledge he could about the Correspondence, met the Topsy King, and learned how to keep an engine running perfectly from talking rats, something as mundane as bizarre architecture really didn't stand out to him.

[i]Perhaps it should have, but I'm not going down that road without anything solid to draw conclusions from.  Not this time.

Of course, the ship's seaworthy-ness is what's keeping us all alive, so perhaps I should have been concerned from the start.[/i]

Adding to this was the fact that he suspected the Doctor had been in the Neath for some time.  Of course, Accalon didn't have the faintest idea what the Doctor's actual [i]history[/i] was...

[i]Enough.  Thinking myself in circles will accomplish nothing.[/i]

It was entirely possible that they had seen him—he hadn't exactly been trying to hide—but after being a thief for so long, walking silently had become something of a habit.  He was halfway over to the Captain and the Doctor before he caught himself, and made sure to make noise with each step.  More than was natural in fact.

[i]Walking like this feels so very, very wrong.[/i]

He had reached them, just about.  And as unnatural as it felt, and probably sounded, they couldn't not know it.

"'Scuse me," he said, "might you be talkin' 'bout the sizes of the rooms onboard?  Because the engin' room's just about the size of a cathedral."

It was hyperbole, of course, but the engine room was massive.  Larger was one thing, large could fit bigger engines than they had while working properly.  The engine room was absurd.