“Are you sure—” Piper started, but Gee was already out in the vestibule, and Piper scrambled to follow. She wanted to say something, to ask him why in the world he was risking his home and his freedom for her and Anna when he barely knew them, but the words caught in her throat.
Gee had his back to her, and he was inspecting the canvas bellows connecting the cars. Light filtered through a hastily mended tear in the canvas. Piper recognized her knife slash. This was the spot where she and Anna had boarded the train.
“I’ll mend it better when we get to Noveen,” Gee said. “I’m more concerned about the pressure plates.”
“Pressure plates?” Piper stood at Gee’s shoulder and looked down at the metal platform where the canvas ended. By the dim light coming from outside, she saw a thin seam in the metal. “Is that what triggers the alarm?”
“Among other things,” Gee said. “The plate runs all the way underneath the canvas to the outside. If someone wants to get onto the train through the vestibule, they have to step on it, and when they do, it triggers the alarm and the flame vents.”
“That’s what happened to me,” Piper said. “I triggered the alarm, but I didn’t realize I’d done it by stepping on the pressure plate.”
“You did. I saw your boot prints on the pressure plate when I checked the vestibule over afterward.” Gee looked at the tear in consternation. “But how did you disable the vents and stop the alarm?”
“I didn’t,” Piper said. “They must have malfunctioned or something.”
Gee shook his head. “I checked the connections a dozen times. The vents to the fuel pipes were closed, but the igniter was still warm, as if it started to fire and then just shut down, which triggered the alarm to shut off too. But there’s nothing wrong with the system. It should have worked.” He looked at her askance. “I thought maybe you’d done something to it, used a trick that you’d learned in the scrap towns, something we hadn’t thought of, to get past the system.”
“I couldn’t do anything,” Piper said, exasperated. “My coat sleeve caught on a bolt, and I wasn’t able to get it untangled in time. The last thing I remember is …” She hesitated, embarrassed to admit how stupid she’d been.
“What?” Gee said. “What is it?”
Piper felt her cheeks get hot. “I put my hand over the vent. I knew it wouldn’t stop me getting a stream of fire in the face, but I was scared out of my mind, so I just closed my eyes and hoped the thing wouldn’t go off.” She shot Gee a sideways glance, expecting him to be looking at her as if she were the queen of the idiots. Instead, she saw his pupils dilate and turn that same yellow color at the edges she’d seen before. Had she made him angry?
“Will you wait here a minute?” Gee asked her, and there was a note of excitement in his voice. “I’ll be right back.” He stepped around her and opened the door to the adjacent car.
“Wait, what’s going on?” Piper demanded, starting to follow him out of the vestibule.
“Just stay here,” Gee said, holding up a hand to stop her. “I’ll tell you when I get back, I promise.”
Reluctantly, Piper nodded and stepped back into the vestibule as Gee took off back toward the cargo areas. What could he possibly be up to? she wondered. His moods changed so quickly Piper had a hard time keeping up. Maybe it was a chamelin trait.
She didn’t have long to wait. A few minutes later, Piper heard footsteps coming from the mail car, and Gee poked his head into the vestibule. His eyes were still alight with that strange excitement, and Trimble was with him.
“Piper, tell the fireman what you just told me,” Gee said.
A dozen questions filled Piper’s head, but she managed to hold her tongue. She showed Trimble how she’d cut through the canvas and told him what had happened with the vent. The fireman wore a thoughtful expression as he listened to Piper’s explanation. He and Gee exchanged several glances while she talked, and Piper found herself fidgeting, talking fast to get to the end of her story. Finally, after the fourth or fifth time they looked at each other, she couldn’t stand it any longer. “What?” she demanded. “Look, I’m sorry if I messed up your fire trap, or whatever it is, but we were running for our lives that night. We were desperate.”
“That’s usually how it happens,” Trimble remarked.
“What is he talking about?” Piper said, looking at Gee.
Instead of answering, Gee turned and checked the doors on either side of him to make sure they were closed securely. The air stank of burning coal, and there was hardly enough room for the three of them in the vestibule. Sweat ran down Piper’s back in itchy little rivers. She couldn’t shake feeling like a trapped animal in the small space.
Trimble took a vial of black liquid off his belt and shook it. “Sarnuns made this chemical—intended to put it in their tobacco,” he said, “but it hardens too much under heat.” He popped the stopper and reached in his pocket with his free hand. He pulled out a match and struck it against the metal car. “Little help, Green-Eye?”
Gee nodded, but he coughed a couple of times, shoulders shaking, before he took the vial and poured the liquid into Trimble’s palm. The black substance was thick like molasses, allowing Trimble to hold a bit in one hand. He dropped the match into the middle of the black puddle.
Flames engulfed the liquid, burning brightly in the center of the fireman’s palm. Piper’s hands flew to her mouth. She stifled a cry at the fire licking along Trimble’s skin, but the man didn’t even flinch. Orange flames reflected in his blue eyes. Trimble made a fist, then opened it, revealing that the puddle of liquid had solidified into a ball. He rolled the fiery marble from hand to hand while Piper stared, transfixed. After a moment, he cupped his hands over the flaming ball and the fire went out in a soft huff of smoke.
The spell broken, Piper blinked and took a step forward. She uncupped Trimble’s hands and turned his palms up. She already knew what she would see—a charred black ball—but the unmarked skin around it, not even hot, made her breath catch in her chest.
“How did you do that?” she said. “No, wait, don’t tell me. It has to be a trick, right? Something in the chemical that takes away the heat. Anna would know. She reads those science books.” She brushed the black ball with her finger, and jumped at the spike of pain. “Ouch! How did that not burn you?”
Trimble grinned lopsidedly. “Makes minding the firebox a lot easier, I can tell you that.”
A wave of dizziness passed over Piper and she had to lean back against the wall of the train car. She tried to think. There had to be an explanation, some deception behind what Trimble had shown her. But the longer she stood there staring at him and Gee—their calm expressions and that charred black ball—the more Piper had the creeping feeling it wasn’t a trick. But if that was so, then … “What are you?” she blurted.
“A fireman,” Trimble said helpfully. He still wore that lopsided grin.
“He’s just like you and me,” Gee said. His voice was hoarse from coughing. “But he has a special talent.”
“Not everyone thinks so,” Trimble said. “I don’t just go around showing everybody what I can do. The few that I have shown usually end up doing all this yelling and carrying on, and then I have to worry that they think I’m some kind of monster.”
“Are you?” Piper couldn’t help asking.
“Hey, I’m—No!” Trimble put on a hurt expression. “I just have magic inside me that the fire responds to. It makes me immune to it, and I can manipulate it like a baker molds his dough.” His blue eyes pierced her. “I have a connection to it, the same way you do with machines.”
Piper shook her head. “Uh-uh. What I do is fix machines—with tools, with my hands. There’s nothing magic about it.”
“You closed the vents,” Gee said, “just by touching them and asking it to happen. The best machinists in Solace couldn’t have done that. And you made that slaver’s gun explode when he pointed it at you.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with the gun,” Piper
insisted. “It was probably just poorly made. I got lucky, that’s all.”
“I don’t think so,” Gee said. “I think you were scared, and you protected yourself on instinct. The gun reacted to your will, to what’s inside you, the same way the fire responds to Trimble.”
“It’s a kind of synergy,” Trimble explained. “Your will speaks to machines in ways that normal people’s can’t. You’re a synergist—that’s what we’re called.”
Piper had never heard the word before or heard of anyone in the world having magic powers. She would have scoffed at the idea if she hadn’t just seen Trimble calmly juggle a ball of fire. “You’re saying there are more people like you?” she asked.
“Like us,” Trimble said, “and yes, I think so, though I’ve never met any until now. But I’ve heard stories and rumors—it’s hard to separate truth from wild tales when you’re dealing with magic.”
“This is crazy,” Piper said. She heard her voice rising, the fear in it. “If I had magic powers, you think I’d waste them on machines? I’d use them for something important, like conjuring food whenever I wanted it—steak dinners, caramel apples, mushroom soup.”
“Caramel and mushroom?” Gee raised an eyebrow.
“Not all at once, but yeah, something like that.” Piper thumped her fist against the metal wall in frustration. She had to make them understand they had it wrong. Her, have magic powers? It was impossible. “You’re just making excuses because the 401’s traps didn’t work for once, and a couple of girls outsmarted you.”
“Things like this have happened to you before, haven’t they?” Gee’s voice was surprisingly gentle considering she’d just insulted him again. “Machines reacting in just the way you want them to?”
Piper thought of the music box she’d fixed for Micah, how he’d said she was weird with machines. “You’re like a healer with them.” Her hand went instinctively to the watch around her neck. The second hand ticked away steadily, the mechanism that ever since she’d fixed it had kept perfect time.
Only for her.
“A power like this is a good thing,” Gee pressed. “It’s helped you survive. It’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“Is that so?” Piper nodded at the black ball in Trimble’s hand. “What about the people who call him a monster for what he can do? That’s all it takes, you know. They find something about you that they don’t like, something different, or some weakness—maybe you’re poor, you’re a scrapper, you’ll work any job at a factory even if it kills you because you’re desperate, desperate like a girl who’s alone and running from someone with enough money to buy her like so many pounds of meat—and they take advantage. They take everything from you!”
Chest heaving, Piper forced her fists to unclench. She’d tried to hold it back, but the storm inside her was too strong. Didn’t she have enough to be afraid of without adding some freakish magical talent? She looked at the fireman and the chamelin. Why were they saying this?
The tiny space went silent, and Gee looked down. Trimble bit his lip, but then he said, “I’m sorry. It’s just that, when I finally accepted that I had this talent, even though it made me different, I was happier. We thought you might feel the same way. If you change your mind and want to know for sure, we can test you.” Trimble tapped his foot lightly on the pressure plate but didn’t put his weight on it. “We’ll be stopping for a supply drop in Phirimor,” he offered. “All we have to do is re-create the conditions of that night, see if you can do the same trick twice.”
Piper couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Did you listen to anything I just said? You think I’m going to stand in front of the fire vent again, maybe whistle a pretty tune while I wait for it to turn me crispy? No, thank you.” She pushed past Trimble to get to the door. “You two are crazy.”
“We’d shut it down before it actually fired,” Trimble said. “You wouldn’t be—”
Gee put a hand on his shoulder. “No, she’s right,” he said. “This wasn’t a good idea. We’re sorry—” He stopped, pressed his hands to his chest, and coughed hard enough to shake his entire body. Pain twisted his face.
Piper took a step toward him and froze. Blood coated Gee’s lower lip. Before she could speak, the chamelin drew a wheezing breath, and his eyes rolled back in his head.
He collapsed in the middle of the vestibule.
Trimble shouted for the guards. Two of them came to help carry Gee to his room. Heart pounding, Piper followed close behind.
They took him to the last car on the train. Maps of Solace covered the walls of Gee’s room, the various train routes marked off in red ink. The rest of the room consisted of a berth, a washstand, and a small table, where the remnants of Gee’s breakfast sat cooling on a plate. The smell of fried eggs lingered in the air.
Piper moved to a corner to stay out of the way while Trimble and the guards got Gee into bed just as another fit of coughing overtook him. They had to hold on to his shoulders to keep him from falling out of the bed until it passed, and when they stepped away, Piper saw that blood flecked the white sheets tucked under Gee’s chin.
“He needs a healer,” Piper said tightly. “The slavers’ dust is tearing up his lungs.”
“I’m the train’s healer,” Trimble said, “but there’s not much I can do for this.” He took a vial of yellow liquid from his belt and pulled out the stopper. The smell of burnt peanuts mingled with the fried egg. “Chamelins may look like humans on the outside, but inside they’re a whole lot different. If we had a chamelin healer, that’d be a good start, but we don’t.” He held the vial to Gee’s lips and forced the rim into his mouth. “Drink,” he said, leaning close to Gee’s ear. “Drink. I know you can hear me. Don’t be stubborn.”
He lifted the vial, and Gee swallowed the thick yellow liquid. Halfway through, he coughed again, spraying yellow liquid down his chin. Trimble cursed and wiped Gee’s mouth with his sleeve.
“Will that cure him?” Piper asked anxiously.
“It’ll ease the cough, but the damage is already done,” Trimble said. Piper noted the tension in the fireman’s body, his lips pressed into a hard line. “You can go,” he told the guards. “Give us some space.”
The guards filed out of the room, and Trimble took the single chair from the table and put it next to Gee’s bed, indicating that Piper should sit. Piper came forward and perched on the edge of the chair. Gee’s face was pale, and though he wasn’t coughing now, every breath he took was a heavy, wheezing labor.
“Is he going to die?” Piper didn’t want to ask it, was terrified of the answer, but she had to know.
“He isn’t breathing well at all,” Trimble said. His blue eyes were huge. “I can’t … I didn’t realize he was this bad off. He never said …” In a sudden, violent motion, he turned and kicked the table leg. Gee’s plate and silverware rattled; his glass overturned and shattered on the floor. Piper stared at the broken pieces, the little drops of juice still clinging to them. “Can you stay with him for a few minutes?” Trimble said, his voice unsteady. “I need to get Jeyne.”
“I’ll stay,” Piper said.
“Thank you.” Trimble swept out of the room without another word.
Alone, Piper bent, picked up the broken pieces of Gee’s glass, and placed them on the table. The juice drops made her fingers sticky. When she turned back to the bed, she noticed Gee’s hand lay open near the edge of the blanket. Tentatively, Piper reached out and laid her palm across his. Gee’s hand was warm, rough with callouses and stained by coal dust, but it fit comfortably into hers. Blood rushed into Piper’s cheeks. Would Gee wake up when he felt the touch? But his fingers stayed slack, and he gave no sign that he was even aware she was there. Piper sat, holding his hand, listening to the sound of his breathing, as if she could keep his chest rising and falling by sheer force of will.
The silence became unbearable. Piper cleared her throat. “You called me stubborn,” she said to Gee, “but you know, you’re just as bad as I am. Why didn’t you tell
anyone how sick you are? You could have at least told Trimble, even if you didn’t want to say it to me.” She swallowed. “I mean, of course you wouldn’t confide in me; you barely know me. We’re not friends or anything. Not that I wouldn’t want to be …” She was babbling. “Look, I know I’m a nuisance, that it’s my fault you’re sick, but we’re going to fix it. Somehow, we’ll make you better.”
Piper’s mind was spinning. Just how was she going to do that? She was the girl who worked miracles with machines. She’d never met one she couldn’t fix. What had Trimble called her? A synergist. But people—like Micah—she couldn’t do anything for people. Piper clenched her other fist in frustration. Healing machines—what was that kind of magic worth? Gee needed someone who knew about chamelin anatomy, someone who could tell what the dust was doing to him inside.
The hairs on the back of Piper’s neck stood up. Anatomy, science, nature—a walking encyclopedia, that was what she needed.
Quivering with excitement and the beginnings of hope, Piper gently let go of Gee’s hand and jumped out of her chair. “I’m going to leave you for a minute,” she told him, “but I’ll be back as fast as I can, I promise. I’m bringing reinforcements.”
When Piper returned to Gee’s room with Anna in tow, Trimble and Jeyne were already there. The engineer shot Piper a severe glance. “Why did you leave him? Trimble told you to stay here.”
“I went to get Anna,” Piper said, trying not to flinch under the older woman’s glare. “I think she can help.”
Jeyne and Trimble exchanged disbelieving glances. “More likely you’ll both be in the way,” Jeyne said. She looked down at Gee, and the lines in her face deepened. “But since it looks like it’s time for miracles, what did you have in mind?”
The Mark of the Dragonfly Page 17
