by Audrey Grey
I flinch, but the next blow never comes. The tip of the whip, a black horsetail, has wrapped around my hand. I yank it free and run.
The next car is quiet and nearly empty. Sun pours in from the large windows, filling the space with bright, relentless light. A man stands behind a table in the middle of the room. Drawing near, I see weapons are laid out on it.
“Lady March,” the man says in a nasally voice. He eyes his pewter timepiece. “You are unacceptably late.” A black top hat crowns wispy white hair and watery, pale-blue eyes. As he talks, his fingers pinch the ends of his white handlebar mustache.
“My apologies,” I say. I can’t draw my eyes away from the table. Lined in a neat row are a small pearl-handled knife, a garrote, a wooden club, a silver crossbow and three sleek arrows, a large silver pistol, and a vial of poison, clearly marked by the skull and crossbones.
I quickly weigh my options. The weapon needs to be small enough I can hide it on my person, which eliminates the pistol, club, and crossbow. And the poison has too many unknown factors. So I’m left with the garrote and the knife.
I reach to examine the garrote, but the man stops me. “There is a price for everything, Lady March.”
“Of course,” I say in a surprisingly calm voice, considering I have no idea how I will pay. I find both pockets of my dress empty, again. My muff . . . but I lost that in the last car. I have nothing to barter with. Perhaps I was supposed to pickpocket someone while dancing, but that option is lost to me now.
Ooh, not good, Flame remarks in my head.
One bushy white eyebrow rises. “Problem?”
“No.” I shake my head for emphasis, setting a few of my tresses—curled and teased into a romantic nest crowning my skull—free. “No problem. I’m just”—looking around, I spy a crystal decanter; the sunlight turns the dark red liquid a tumescent plum and skips inside the three cordial glasses beside it—“thirsty.”
The man hasn’t taken his eyes off me. The way his stare keeps flitting to my pockets tells me he suspects I am up to something, but he wants to believe me. His greed blinds him.
I reach into my cleavage as if there is actually something in there. “I will pay you twice the asking price.”
His gaze lands on my chest, and an expectant flush reddens his cheeks. “A toast, then.”
As he pours our glasses, I think about my next move. My heart beats so loudly I think he’ll surely realize that I don’t actually plan to pay. But he hands me the cool, light glass, raises his, and smiles. “To your unfailing generosity and my unfailing health.”
And then I understand. He was expecting me to try and use one of the weapons to kill him and take what I wanted. Well, I’m changing things a bit.
Our glasses meet in a loud chink. There’s the sound of shattering glass, and the liquid in my cup bleeds from the jagged edge where it has broken, staining the fur lining of my sleeve. “Oh, goodness,” I say, trying to look embarrassed. “That was my fault.”
The man’s glass still wavers in the air. A beam of sunlight pierces its contents and dances over his impenetrable expression. “Of course,” the man says, his words slow and careful. “How clumsy of you.”
The last remaining glass swells with the dark liquid. He hesitates before handing the drink to me.
“Bottoms up?” I say, my words slurred with impatience.
The liquid hits my lips first. Blackberry rum, by the taste of it—a Royalist favorite. The man, who still seems troubled by something, lifts his glass, slowly, his mouth parting. I stop breathing as I watch the red liquid swim up the glass. Kiss his lips . . .
He slams the drink down with a crash, spitting. Purplish-red rum explodes onto the table and rivers down his chin. I can’t tell if he swallowed anything or not.
“You cheated!” he accuses. One finger touches the red stain under his chin where the poisoned liquid still dribbles. His gaze rests on the bottle marked with an X. I didn’t have time to put it back exactly where it went, and it sits on the edge of the table now. A smile stretches his lips. “Clever girl.”
My hands go numb. Fienian hell, he didn’t swallow it.
Then his jaw slackens, his eyes dull, and he melts to the floor, the mannequin-grin still plastered across his face. A flimsy red ribbon trickles from his nose.
“I’m sorry,” I say, dropping the garrote and the knife into each pocket—all that will fit. But I’m not. As hard as I try, I am not sorry.
Not one bit.
There’s a clawing sense of urgency now as I slip into the next train car. I stop dead in my tracks. Children, a carload of boys and girls clothed in clean white linen. Relief washes over me as I realize I won’t have to use violence at least, whatever this car holds in store for me.
Various children’s toys—wooden trains, blocks, a spinning top—litter the floor. I step over them as I walk. The children scamper around me as if I’m invisible. The floor shakes with the stomping of their bare feet. My skirt hem sweeps in front of me, knocking over a spinning top. It rolls across the floor and bangs against the side of the car. A dull, nagging sense of unease tickles the nape of my neck.
This is too easy.
I’m nearly to the door when a breeze whispers against my cheek. A free strand of my hair, coppery-red in this pure light, tickles my bottom lip. The window to my right gapes wide open. A child is clinging to the outside. Little fingers clench the windowsill, his head pressed down, acting as a lever to keep him from falling as his brown hair waves in the wind.
One of his hands slips and he cries out, just barely holding on, his fingers smudging the glass. The other children ignore him.
I have to make a decision. Save the boy or finish my mission and win. I am surprised by how little I feel for him, despite knowing I am his only hope. Actually, I resent him for being weak. For not helping himself.
My feet move. The wind tugs mercilessly at my hair and waters my eyes. I see the boy’s face as he peers up at me. I don’t know why I’m here—I meant to go the other way. But part of me is relieved I’m not a complete monster. I’m still redeemable.
I help him over the side. That’s when I notice the golden whistle dangling from his neck. He smiles up at me, brown eyes sparkling with gratitude, takes the whistle between his lips, and blows.
The children stop playing. “What are you doing?” I shout over the hum of the train. “Stop!” I yell as he brings the whistle once again to his lips. Through the door leading back to the dance car, I see the faraway form of a Centurion. His head turns in question as another loud shriek from the whistle pierces my eardrums.
“You’re not Lady Everly March.” The boy’s face has twisted into a hateful grimace, and his lips curl around the whistle for a third blow. The Centurion will find me if he does.
“Please,” I beg. “Don’t.”
I thought I wasn’t a monster. But my hands, beautifully slim, graceful, aristocratic hands meant for dancing across a piano or pouring tea, cup each tiny shoulder, his child’s bones sharp and fragile beneath my palms, and give a small push.
I stare at the void where he clung. My hands are still held up, perfectly still, remorseless. A snow flurry dances through the window and lands on one manicured fingertip, disappears.
I dig through my pockets, searching for the weapons as I make my way to the next car. I feel distant, removed from myself. My reflection catches in the windowpane of the door right before I open it. The sunlight illuminates my right half, leaving the left side dark. For the briefest of moments, I see the girl I used to be resolve from the darkness. Her innocent, plain face smiles at me, my reflection perfectly opposite halves.
Old and new.
Weak and strong.
I’m sorry, I think, as she melts away just like the snowflake, and I open the door to the next train car. There’s no place for you anymore.
Except that I’m wrong. My mother waits for me, dressed in a gold jumpsuit, her foil raised in guard position, ready to lunge. The entire train car is an exact repl
ica of the padded room. A golden foil rests at my feet.
“Mom!” I know she’s not real. I know she’s not. But all I want to do is fling myself into her arms and cry. “Mom—”
“On your guard!” she snaps, her coiled body trembling with anticipation, just like all the other times.
And then I realize they put her in here to mess with me. Somehow—probably during my reconstruction—they know about those torturous sessions.
This isn’t a reunion; it’s a duel. One that I have to fight and win if I want to beat Pit Boy— which I do, desperately.
I lean down, grip the pommel, hefting the foil from one hand to the other to test its weight. Satisfied, I salute and drop low, stretching my arm until the foil is aimed directly at her heart. My left arm curves back and over my head like the tail of a scorpion. I make eye contact with my mother. “Ready.”
My mother lunges forward like a cobra. I counter and retreat. The tip of her foil stabs just inches from my heart. Before I can recover, she is lunging again. A scream rises inside me, and I slam into the back of the train car, circling to my right. She follows, hardly moving, a steel spring. She’s getting closer. I trip, nearly miss getting ran through. As she recovers guard position, her eyes lock onto mine. “You’re weak, Maia. Weak and slow and—”
She springs forward, her foil whistling through the air toward my throat. The tip glances off my neck. Warm blood seeps onto the hem of my bodice.
“Weak and slow and easily distracted,” she continues, her feet silent as they gain ground without seeming to move. “Are you giving up, Maia?”
She attacks again, and I drop low for a stop-thrust, barely missing her chest. “That’s not my name!”
“No? I had a daughter like you once. She was weak, scared. Helpless.”
“And then you abandoned her!” I lunge, and she parries without so much as a grunt. “You left your children to die!” I lunge again, but she snakes her foil low, and it pierces my shoulder.
I howl with pain and fall back before she can thrust again.
Her lips press together in derision. “Weak, weak Maia. You’re no daughter of mine.”
Blood drips to the padded white floor. I can’t beat her. The anger and disappointment I feel is so real it nearly chokes me. My mother is right. Even reconstructed, I’m not good enough. I’ll never be good enough.
I can end this now, Flame offers. No reason to suffer if you’ve already lost.
Oh, what I would have given for someone to have ended it back then. Outright losing on purpose would have only enraged my mother, so I learned to make it look like I was losing on accident, finding more and more inventive ways to lose.
If anything, those sessions taught me to be cunning and resourceful.
My mother resumes the guard position in preparation for the finishing blow. But my eyes are glued to the faint outline of the door. “I wasn’t what you wanted, Mother,” I say, working to keep my voice from cracking, “but I was clever.”
She scoffs, her body coiled to spring. “And how does being clever win a fight?”
“It doesn’t. It gets me out of one.”
I leap for the door as she strikes. My hand slams the door handle, it cracks open, and I wedge my body through. Slumping down the door, I suck air for a moment, going over my plan. The idea is so simple I wonder how I missed it. I don’t have to fight my way to the middle train car. In fact, if I have any chance of winning at all, I need to go back to the pilot car, which is closer. I squint at the door in front of me, grimacing at the thought of crossing through the cars I have already passed.
Unless I’m being clever and I cross over them.
Hysterical laughter seeps from my throat.
Princess, you’ve gone crazy, Flame accuses. Coming from her the term might be a compliment.
You want crazy, Fienian? Watch this.
The ladder leading to the roof is slick with ice. At the top, a blast of wind pelts snow against my cheeks and rips the last of my trapped hair free, whipping it across my vision. The sun has peeked below the mountain.
I force a tiny step, trying not to look at the ground thousands of feet below. The unfinished bridge looms ahead, closer than I hoped.
My boots slip and slide across the thin icy slush covering the roof. My stomach plunges each time as my brain unhelpfully provides scenes of me plummeting to my death. I make it to the end of the car and have successfully navigated my jump to the next train car when I hear it. Or, rather, feel it.
Someone is behind me.
I know it’s Riser before I even turn around. For some reason, I’m not surprised. All the fears I had about him suddenly come true as I glance at the pistol hanging loosely in his left hand. My chest lightens, and a strange hollowness fills me.
I had assumed all along Riser’s orders were the same as mine. And they were similar. He was ordered to kill someone.
Me.
“Lady March.” Riser is wearing an irreverent grin, his hair blowing in the wind. His coal-black doublet and crimson cloak makes a striking contrast against his pale skin. Not one trace of doubt or remorse graces his admittedly handsome countenance.
He runs two fingers over his chin, as if he finds my predicament curious. Only the gap between train cars separates us—not that his pistol particularly minds. I fight the brief tinge of pleasure his presence brings, knowing it is only my reconstruction.
Seriously, how could I be happy to see someone who’s about to kill me?
“Pit Boy,” I yell in greeting over the wind, suddenly wishing I’d chosen the crossbow. An arrow sticking out of the hollow of his throat would make me giddy right now. “You’ve won, so follow your orders like a good boy and shoot me.”
His brow furrows. “Is that what you want?”
I pause. Something’s off. He should have shot me by now. Maybe he’s toying with me? Does he want to rub in his victory? Give me a tiny glimmer of hope so he can snatch it from my hands?
“We received the same orders, Lady March. The man with the Gold rose? I met him. Nice fella.” He lifts a defiant eyebrow. “But I’m not following their orders.”
Our eyes lock. He’s leaned so far over the gap even the tiniest bump would send him over. Although I’m sure I would like that, the thought makes my palms sweat. Whatever he’s trying to do, he seems conflicted. As if one part of him wants to jump across the divide and push me into the abyss and the other part is fighting him.
“Then whose orders are you following?”
He sighs, as if he can’t believe what he’s about to say. “Yours.”
My hand slaps the scream back into my mouth as he plummets over the side, his cape streaming behind him. I watch his body flip end over end until it becomes a dark pebble against the snow.
There’s a shriek of surprise inside my head as Flame reacts. “Quick! Pull him!”
Her voice snaps me out of shock. The bridge looms ahead, too close. Run, idiot, my brain screams.
And then I do.
Chapter Sixteen
Tiny, piercing pinpricks. They stab at my exposed face and fingers. My lips feel hard and cold and hurt to move, and the blood on the neck of my blouse has turned into an icy crust. I relax my frozen body into the lounger at the back of the empty engine car, trying to work enough warmth into my fingers so I can grip the garrote. Luckily, the heat from the engine furnace has made this room insufferably hot and my fingers become bendable again.
I’m not sure what I’m expecting when I open the pilot door. I know there will be a conductor. I know to change the train’s course, I will have to kill him.
But I’m not expecting the conductor to be my father. “Hello, Maiabug,” he says.
I blink and rub my eyes. For a second, he wavers. The tiniest of glitches. So small I assume I have made it up.
Something’s not right, Flame says. Look up, above the door.
I do as commanded.
See the red lever? Pull it!
I want to, but I can’t. My father is smi
ling at me, his gentle eyes warm and bright. I know it’s not real, but I don’t care. He’s talking to me. It’s a conversation we had right before he died. I struggle to hear the words.
Pull the lever, Flame orders. Her voice is unusually calm, which actually scares me more than if it was panicked.
“It’s okay,” my dad is saying. He reaches out to comfort me. Just like when I was nine, I pull away, angry at him because my mother isn’t here to blame. “We all want to cling to who we were. But you’re not a child, anymore, Maiabug, and it’s time for you to grow up.”
“If I do,” I say, “I’ll become someone else.”
My father’s face distorts so that his eyes droop a bit. The leather conductor’s chair he sits in becomes his favorite green club chair, and part of the train’s windshield warbles and transforms into the lit fireplace behind him.
His normally rich voice becomes mechanical sounding. “We all have to change.” The garrote, which has somehow made it into my hands, quivers. His big melty eyes glance at the garrote. He smiles. “But no matter how much you change, you will always be my beautiful little girl.”
The windshield wavers, and just like a screen changing channels, the image flips back to the landscape outside the train. The bridge rises up to the right. If I don’t switch tracks now, I’ll miss my chance.
Last time I tell you, Princess, Flame says. Pull it.
The lever, Everly. Nicolai’s voice joins Flame’s.
Instead, I turn to my father. “You know what I have to do, Daddy.”
He nods, a small frown darkening his face. “Survive.”
The garrote slips easily around his neck. I avert my head and twist, counting to sixty. His body slumps at forty-seven. Somehow my fingers find the right button on the dashboard to switch the tracks. There’s screeching. The train rocks to the right, shuddering as it navigates the sharp turn.
I look up, but the red lever at the top is gone. I call to Flame for instructions, but she no longer responds.
