Call Forth the Waves

by L. J. Hatton

  I turned off the computer in the library and fixed the lock back in place when I left.

  My friends and I had to get out of the city and as far away as possible. A car was too obvious—and subject to roadblocks passing themselves off as normal police procedures. The airports would be under surveillance, but there was a chance that some of the trains had been overlooked. We had to risk another use of Winnie’s touch in public.

  I couldn’t have been happier. The fire of the previous night seemed years away. I was getting better at compartmentalizing, and that didn’t scare me nearly as much as it should have.

  Our train was called the Diamond Zephyr, a fortuitous nod to Vesper’s touch that gave me hope for a smooth ride, even after I’d seen the placards brazenly declaring it “The Titanic of the Rails” due to the opulence inside. Basically a hotel on wheels, the Zephyr was not a commuter train, nor was it the kind of low-lying bullet that a fugitive might use as a hideout. It was an ostentatious spectacle, suitable only for hiding in plain sight—the Orient Express of the modern age made to look like the original one, with a few extra bells and whistles for set dressing. And though you could board or disembark anywhere along the dedicated line, it ran from coast to coast as a period re-creation. A handful of people lived there full time, immersed in the era, watching the mundanes through fringed, curtained windows. East to west, then west to east and back again.

  I couldn’t wait to get on board.

  I ran past upholstered walls and paneled doors, five years old again and racing away from the engine so that I was moving double speed. Uncatchable. Unstoppable. Free in a way that was impossible to understand from the outside. I’m sure the people I passed thought I was crazy. A wildling child set loose among the gentle folk, with her hair streaming and a high giggle because she knew things they’d never understand and wouldn’t want to. Many passengers didn’t dress the part, so I didn’t stand out that way, but I wasn’t like them, either. For them, the Zephyr was a museum piece, something they were afraid to touch or break. They didn’t let it get into their blood, and for that, I pitied them.

  I stood on the platform at the back, which was the only one not sealed in by silk-covered rubber to prevent people from falling as they moved from car to car. Here there were brass rails and mahogany siding, gas lights and a green-striped canopy where passengers could wave good-bye to loved ones. It was deserted once the station passed out of sight; no one wanted to ruin their costumes by letting the wind rip the feathers off their hats. But I stayed and let the moving air hit my face. Eyes closed and arms crossed, embraced by the sights and sounds of home. I was Juliet, and this was my balcony. My life had become a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions; it seemed only fitting that I got my own monologue.

  ’Tis but my name that is my enemy. Roma!

  What is Roma? Not hand nor foot.

  Not arm, nor face, nor any other part.

  Not pyre, not ground, neither water nor wind nor stars.

  I was more than the sum of my parts and the genetic code within them. That I could accept. It was the denying of my father and the refusing of my name that tripped me up. I would forever be a Roma, sworn and true, even if I was the last one standing.

  Eventually, even I had to leave the platform. Jermay, Winnie, Klok, and Birch were waiting for me in our car. I’d volunteered to fetch our dinner so I could have some time alone with the train. Call it closure, if you need a technical term, but it helped. I could breathe again.

  I entered the dining car. Two men opened the double-wide doors and held them until I’d crossed inside. They latched them back, with one man standing at attention on the right side of the doors and his twin on the left. Their faces were different in shape and complexion, but they dressed alike and stood alike. Queen’s Guard in purple rather than red.

  Ladies in corseted dresses with fine hats and gloves gaggled at a corner table, drinking tea and exchanging cards that bore the images of other passengers. They were no doubt participants in one of the Zephyr’s famous Sherlock Society outings, where groups competed with each other to solve puzzles between stops and a murder mystery before the final destination.

  Their rivals had possession of a booth beside the window, which they were using as a backlight to examine yellowed papers for invisible ink. Others in period dress milled around the room in scattered clumps or pairs, along with those in plain clothes, waiting patiently—or not—for plates to carry back to their berths and cars.

  “Please order at the bar, miss,” said a polite man with a thick, black moustache and a starched white waiter’s coat bearing eight buttons in two rows. He must have thought my observation of the room was due to confusion about how the archaic system worked.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He tipped his head and made his way to the doors with a stack of covered trays. The doormen jumped into action to help him out. That job must have gotten very old, very fast with the amount of foot traffic in and out of the car.

  I floated toward the bar in a cloud of bliss, certain that the next four days would be the best in recent memory. And then it all came to a brutal, screeching halt. A familiar strangling sensation took hold of me at the first sight of a man in a black polo shirt and a tan baseball cap.

  Warden Nye. Again.

  If this was the Titanic of the Rails, I’d just discovered our iceberg.

  He sat in an elegant seat at the bar, sipping from a crystal tumbler and obviously waiting. His back was to me, but he’d seen me in the mirror tilted above the back of the bar.

  I thought of running, turning around and returning to our car, but what good would it do? He was here for me, and there would be no ridding myself of him until I found out why. At least the public setting would ensure he kept up Commission manners.

  “Did you look her up?” he asked. He didn’t bother to face me. We were talking like a couple of movie spies, out of synch with the surrounding décor.

  “How?” I asked through gritted teeth.

  He shrugged. “I assumed the robot came with his own hotspot. Iva got excellent reception.”

  “How did you know we’d be on this train?”

  And more importantly, did he know it was taking us closer to Cyril? Did Nye have his own version of Nafiza, capable of plotting our course before we knew it?

  “Basic human nature, Penelope. You had the choice of a plane ticket or train fare, and it’s more difficult to get on a plane with your metal menaces and a giant whose internal organs would set off the security scanners in an airport. People seek safety in the familiar. For you, that’s a very specific breed of train. I’d offer you a drink, but they’re out of everything except diet soda.”

  He swirled his glass to make the ice clink, much as he had before the Center made its final descent, only his humor was much improved.

  “Is this some kind of game to you?” I asked. “Cat and mouse or hide-and-seek?”

  “Everybody needs a hobby.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Nothing new,” he said.

  The man behind the bar quirked an eyebrow at that. He was listening to us, gauging the conversation between a grown man and a teenage girl to see if there was anything interesting or troublesome to be heard while he polished glasses and plated meals.

  Nye picked up his drink and headed for the last booth in the car, and I knew he wanted me to follow. I did, but I sat facing the bar in hope that I could signal for help if I needed it. The bartender was still watching, and the doormen were close.

  “This place could make a person feel underdressed,” he said. “I generally try to blend, but this is the best hat I own now, considering my dress attire was tragically lost.”

  “If you’re looking for sympathy, you should try your tailor, because I’d happily burn every stitch of clothing with a Commission ankh on it.”

  “I bet you would,” he said, and sipped his drink through a smirk. “It wouldn’t help your sisters much.”

  “Althea Dodge is one of
the wardens who was at the Center,” I said. “I looked her up. Is that what you wanted to hear me say?”

  “What I want you to do is listen.” He folded his hands on the table between us. “Do you know why I came to collect you and your sisters?”

  Obvious questions couldn’t be trusted when they were asked by someone like him. He was a snake with too many layers of unshed skin waiting to be revealed.

  “You said my father owed you. You came to claim the debt.”

  “I said we’d made a deal and that part of that deal was protecting your family, which I did on more than one occasion throughout your life. It’s what I attempted to do at the train.”

  “You tried to kill us in order to save us?”

  Saying crazy things in rational tones didn’t make them any more plausible.

  “Some of us take questionable paths to nobler ends,” he said. A similar sentiment to Greyor’s reasoning for serving a Commission officer. “Usually, it’s a matter of balance and counterweight. Your father’s untimely removal of himself from the picture triggered a series of events that I couldn’t stop. The scales tipped.”

  “You showed up with an armored convoy and blew our train off the tracks.”

  “No, your dwarf friend had a delusion of grandeur, imagined himself a hero, and he blew it up,” he said, speaking of how Squint had sabotaged the train to ensure that the Commission couldn’t take it intact. “I derailed it because I knew the precautions Magnus had taken in his absence. I never would have gotten near you without assistance. There are certain expectations to be met when one rises to my position, especially when that rise is made against opposition at the higher levels. If those expectations aren’t met, questions arise, and if the answers aren’t satisfactory, you’re left with complications.”

  Was he actually trying to claim that sacking the train had been in our best interests? That he was saving us from some worse fate by hunting us down and taking us prisoner?

  “You and your sisters would have been safe with me. We could have had this conversation as a group at the Center, but now that chance is gone and the scales have tipped again. Another drastic move is necessary.”

  “You hung me off a balcony and threatened to let go.”

  He shrugged.

  “Threats don’t hurt anyone. I wanted to see what pushing you could accomplish, since your father found the idea so distasteful. The more I pushed, the more you found yourself able to do, and the more you impressed me. Magnus did you a disservice by holding you back.”

  “Is he dead?” I finally asked the question that terrified me more than anything. It was no worse to ask than it was to keep imagining and filling in the details with every horrible notion that waltzed through my brain uninvited.

  “I don’t know. He certainly hasn’t contacted me since that night, but a lack of contact proves only that he’s in no condition to break his silence.”

  “You’re lying. He wouldn’t call you.”

  “We’ve been through this—I don’t lie.”

  “If a liar claims he tells no lies . . .”

  “Touché. That is one of the oldest riddles in the world, but in this instance—”

  He reached into his pocket. I had a sudden thought. What if all of the passengers were Commission plants? He could be signaling someone. The bartender, or maybe the ladies hunkered down over their cards. I, of all people, should have known better than to take a costume at face value.

  “I’m here alone,” Nye said, as if he’d read my mind. “It’s a question I’d ask, myself.”

  He took out a cell phone. Little more than a clear slip of glass contoured to fit in his hand. Far too advanced to be a commercial model. When he turned it to face me, the glass was opaque, and I was looking at my father.

  “Be my guest,” Nye said.

  I pressed the play symbol on his face.

  “Stardust,” my father said.

  That was it.

  “Where’s the rest of the message?” I asked.

  “That’s all he said. A call to arms, triggering the response you saw at the train.”

  One word—that word. One frame. It could have been a fake, but I knew better. It felt real.

  “Magnus believed himself to be in control of something he couldn’t contain. He ran out of time before ever preparing you for what was coming. When faced with opposition from your sisters and the train itself, I had to react in the way expected of me. I minimized the damage as much as I could. What happened should not have happened.”

  No.

  He’d already robbed me of the narrative I’d believed to be my life. He didn’t get to do this, too. He didn’t get to rewrite what happened and his part in it as some massive misunderstanding. He set in motion the events that cost me my family. He made the first move that ended with Zavel’s death and Evie’s. There was no undoing that.

  “You and my father were not friends,” I said. Why would my father have left me that recording lamenting his deal with a devil and then turn around and contact Nye by choice? “I don’t care how many messages you claim he sent you, I’ll never believe you were.”

  “Allies don’t have to be friends. They only need to share a common goal.”

  “What goal?” I asked.

  He turned his head toward the window.

  “I think this is my stop.”

  Outside, the streaked lines of green and brown and blue slowed to become trees and buildings against the sky. We passed into a terminal with passengers waiting in a queue to board.

  “A performer such as yourself has to appreciate the timing,” he said with a grin. “I’ve given you my olive branch. Now it’s your turn to trust me.”

  He laid a black business card on the table. On one side was a familiar splitting double helix in the shape of an ankh. On the other was a printed address.

  “If you ride this line to the end of your fare, you’ll be a ten-minute cab ride from this building. Ask for me at the desk, and don’t mind Gladys, she doesn’t like anyone.”

  “A Commission building?” I asked. I couldn’t walk into a Commission building.

  “That is who I work for,” he said. “Your last stop coincides with the final day of our recruitment week, when those chosen for our scholarship and intern programs come in for a tour of the facility. The place will be overrun with eager young people just like you. No one will give you a second glance unless you run a brush through that rat’s nest Iva bonded to your scalp and make yourself presentable. If you show up, we’ll finish the conversation. If you don’t, I can’t help you, and you’ll be of no help whatsoever to dear Nimue.”

  He signaled the doormen, who opened the double doors to let him leave.

  A few seconds later, he was sauntering past the window like any of the other passengers who had exited the train. Smiling at people who jostled by, helping an elderly man off the curb. He caught my eye like he knew I’d be watching and tipped his cap before disappearing into the swarm.

  The business card sat on the table next to the phone he’d left behind, waiting to bite me and inject me with its venom. If I picked it up, the fever would start. I’d obsess over what Nye did or didn’t know and what he was willing to tell me.

  I wasn’t naïve enough to take his offer as a gift. He’d want something in return, but was there anything too precious to trade if it meant my sister’s freedom? It had to be destiny that the key to finding Nim lay in the same direction as Cyril and my father.

  I picked up the phone and swiped across. It was still set to the message my father had left. I hit play.

  “Stardust,” he said again.

  The phone rang in my hand.

  “Tell Birch I didn’t write that letter,” Nye’s voice said, and then the line went dead.

  The others weren’t going to like this.

  “You did what?” Jermay asked.

  “I saw Nye in the dining car. He said—”

  “You talked to him?” Birch asked. “You actually talked to him?”


  Yep. No one was happy with Penn or her bad decisions.

  When I returned to our car, everyone asked where I’d been for so long. When I explained the run-in with Nye, Xerxes bit the phone in half and Bijou ate the business card. If he’d been able to light himself, he would have barbecued it first.

  “The car had plenty of people in it, and he was alone,” I said. “It was perfectly safe.”

  It didn’t help that I knew I’d be agreeing with them if I wasn’t the one trying to make the arguments.

  “Safe and that man don’t belong in the same universe, much less on the same train!” Jermay said. “That’s it. We get off at the next stop.”

  “Unless he’s got the next stop staked out for collection,” Birch pointed out.

  “Right.” Jermay nodded. “We don’t wait. We can get off a moving train.”

  I hadn’t considered the possibility that Nye would be waiting to ambush us at the next terminal, so that was a valid concern, but hearing Jermay and Birch backing each other up was throwing me off.

  “We have to ride out the line,” I said. “It’s the only way to reach Cyril.”

  “Penn, he knows where we’re going,” Birch said. “We won’t make it to Cyril’s house. We have to find another way.”

  There was no other way! I had no other leads. Without Nye’s bait, I wouldn’t even have the name Althea Dodge.

  “Winnie, what do you think?” I asked. “Was Nye protecting you from Arsenic, or was that a lie?”

  “He’s the one who moved me to another cell. That’s all I know.”

  Beep! Beep! B-beep! Beep!

  Klok made furious noises, typing across his screen as fast as he could.

  “I know more! I know he tried to cut me! He tried to take me apart with a saw!”

  “But he didn’t know you could feel pain, Klok—he still doesn’t. He thinks you’re like Iva.”

  “We are not alike!” He turned away so the others couldn’t see his screen. “Brothers protect sisters. Sisters should protect brothers!”

  I’d hurt his feelings.