by Teresa Rook
While I’m inspecting the portcullis, my leg suddenly trembles, and I’m dumped onto my knees. I groan and glare at the offending limb. “What?” I demand. “I was just standing there. Can’t you let me just stand somewhere?”
My entire body trembles. I splay my arms out along the ground, trying to find balance, but I’m sitting down. I shouldn’t be dizzy. The tremble comes again, and then the clacking of stones being jostled from their place. I scramble to put my back against the wall so I’m out of sight of whatever’s coming around the corner, but nothing appears.
When I peek back out, an indentation in one of the archways, one I somehow missed on my first pass of the wall, catches my eye. Small stones lay on the ground in front of it, a plugged hole that’s coming undone. Is this how they got in? Did Riksher and Ennis tunnel through this barrier and plug it back up behind them?
Why would they bother?
The rocks, recently packed, are easily dug back out. My nails tear, and I earn a few small cuts from the stones’ sharp black edges, but after a few minutes, I’ve widened the hole enough to squeeze through. I hesitate on the other side before dutifully filling the hole back in behind me.
The city spreads before me, mostly low buildings made of clay and thatched roofs like the ones in Yural. But between them rise black towers, hewn from the black rock they stand on. The bungalows thin out as the city climbs towards the mountain, and it’s mostly the spires that crawl up along its base. The juxtaposition is strange, seeing soaring witch buildings nestled among more traditional tribal homes.
I don’t see any fire from where I stand, so I pick the nearest smoke plume and set out at as fast a pace as I can manage. Some of the homes are a bit scorched, but only one has burned to the ground. Wherever there’s ash, there’s also bright yellow sand. Riksher and Ennis may have been starting fires, but someone else has been smothering them before they can spread.
We’re not alone here.
I catch a glimpse of red between the buildings, just out of the corner of my eyes. A torch? I try to sniff it out, but the entire city smells like smoke.
“Ennis!” I call. “Riksher! Are you here?”
Footsteps behind me. I turn in time to see a club flying sideways towards my face. I duck and my assailant’s fist comes at me from the other side. I meet the blow with my palm and hold her hand there, between our bodies.
The red wasn’t a torch. It was this girl’s hair.
“Hello there,” I say. She’s tall but wispy, and while she’ll be quick, she’s not heavy enough to do much damage. I push back hard on her fist, and she takes two steps backward. She trains her eyes on me and snarls, an impressively animal sound.
“Misunderstanding, maybe,” I say as she flies at me again. I sidestep but she pivots at the last second, and while her fists miss me by miles, her foot slams into my bad knee. I instantly crumple. Was it that obvious?
“Up,” she says, grabbing me by the upper arm. She tries to yank me upwards but my leg can no longer bear my weight. She narrows her eyes as I sink back to the ground, but her fists aren’t up. Hurting me is not her priority.
“I can’t,” I gasp through the pain. “You just took out my leg.”
“What are you doing here?” she demands.
I bark out a strained laugh, hoping it sounds friendly through the pain. “You could have asked me that twenty seconds ago.”
“I’m asking you now. Why have you come?”
She cuts a striking figure against the spires of the city standing tall and slim behind her. Her skin is pale, a colour that reminds me of Mhyra. But unlike Mhyra, sleek is the word that comes to mind. Like she’s a part of this city of edges.
“I’m looking for something,” I say. “What are you doing here?”
Her eyes narrow again. “I ask, you answer. Unless you’d rather go back to doing this the hard way?” She eyes my leg, and I gulp.
“Honestly,” I say. “I came to look.”
“For your Chiral friends?”
The shock registers on my face before I can tamp it down. I swear. “Partly. Yes. But not…we’re not on good terms right now. We disagree on some things.”
“Like burning an entire tribe alive, I’m guessing.”
My stomach drops. “You’re not a looter? You live here?”
Now’s her turn to laugh. “It’s the Chirals who decided this city was dead. I love how surprised you all are when you realize the rest of the world isn’t built around your labels.”
“I’m not a Chiral,” I say, half-heartedly. It won’t matter. I’m closer to a Chiral than I am to this girl, pale like the moon and with a halo of curly red hair. “And the others—my friends, yes, okay, you’re right, my friends—they didn’t know anyone lived here. I swear.”
“Sure.” But despite her tone, she’s starting to loosen up. Her shoulders are edging down as curiosity slowly overrules tension and fear. “So, if you’re not here to light us up, what have you come for?”
“I’m…looking for something.”
“So you said. What?”
Can I lie? Is there anything I could have come here for except the trains?
Will this girl be on my side?
“I’m here for the trains,” I say, hoping she is like Arahna and Cahrdre, someone whose life was better when they shared it with the witches. “I think I can make them run again.”
Her eyes widen. “Are you a witch?”
“No.” I pause, and doubt wells up in my mind. There have been a lot of surprises in these last months. What can I know for sure? “Maybe.”
She folds her arms across her chest and waits.
“I can see runes,” I explain. “That’s why I was traveling with the Chirals.”
“So you could help them find tech.”
“Yes. But,” I say, holding up a hand to stay her accusation, “I kind of double-crossed them. That’s why we separated.”
“Double-crossed how?”
“I wanted to protect the trains, so I lied about the metal tech. Said fire destroys those runes. It doesn’t.”
She speaks slowly. “What do you want with the trains?”
“We used to use them for trade. We could transport lots of cargo to and from Niroek, much faster than we can now with horses and carts. Now that Niroek has food and Carnigai is starving, my idea… I think that, if I can figure out how the witches made the trains run, I can find a way to replicate that. We bring the trains back, which brings us a chance to trade with Niroek for the food we need. It can give us back a powerful ally.”
“And you think Niroek would help us?”
“I think they’re mad about how we handled the witches. I think that, if we can prove we’re still moving forward, they might open their borders to us again.”
“So, the trains are a symbol.”
My face grows hot. “Sure. But also, they’ll let us carry food.”
“But only if the Nirokeans are impressed enough to open their borders back up.”
I hadn’t really thought of that. “One thing at a time, alright?”
Our conversation is interrupted by a tired voice, bone-chillingly near. “Yarlin. Anything?”
“Nothing,” she says, stepping away from where I’ve tried to shrink into the shadows. Her face goes blank and professional. “I don’t think there’s anyone else here.”
“Garroc has them in the prison for now. We’re meeting at sundown to discuss.”
“Got it. I’ll be there.”
I hear whoever it is walking away, and I breathe a silent sigh of relief. Once they’re long gone, the girl, Yarlin, turns back to me.
“You lied,” I say. She has no reason to trust me. Why would she put her tribe on the line?
She shrugs. “If what you say is true…”
“It is.” I bite my lip and attempt a forlorn smile. “But my friends. Prison?”
She narrows her eyes. “Bit early to be asking favours. Come on. I have somewhere to show you.”
#####
&
nbsp; I hobble along, my hand holding firmly to the taller girl’s shoulder. A few strands of her hair brush across my face whenever she turns her head. The sun falls below the wall as we walk, but the sky is still a vibrant, living red. We pass sections of scorched ground, and gusts of ash blow past us, but they’re isolated. Riksher and Ennis kept starting fires, and this girl’s tribe kept putting them out.
Yarlin leads me into a strange building at the base of the mountain. Rather than doors, it has gaping archways the same size as the plugged ones in the outer wall. The elevation immediately dips when we step inside, and with it, the temperature of the air. I shiver. “What is this place?”
“You’ll see.”
She draws a knife from her belt and panic rises. Has she brought me here only to kill me?
She strikes the knife against the wall, creating sparks. She does it again, and the second time they catch on a torch that hangs right below. It burns slowly at first, and then the whole thing lights up at once and our surroundings are illuminated.
Long silver tubes lined up in rows all around us, far too sleek to be part of this world.
Anymore.
I limp to the nearest shell, practically falling against it. The metal is cool and slippery under my fingers, and I hold myself to it like a lost horse, an old friend to give me warmth. They’re smaller than I expected. Yarlin’s torchlight flickers in its shell, the same metal Akisir is built from, in an infinite mirror of fire that bounces from one surface out into a million directions. I’ve never seen anything like it, the amount of Dargas and Yarlins reflected back at me.
The trains are everywhere.
“You say you can make then run again,” Yarlin says. She gestures wide, the torch arcing out at her side. “Welcome to the train station.”
twenty-seven
Yarlin leaves with the vague promise of returning soon. She leaves me the torch, which I stab into a crevice in the rocky ground. It’s only once she’s gone that I realize I have so many unanswered questions.
Who is she? What tribe is this? Have they lived here all along? How many of them are there?
Were any of them harmed when Riksher and Ennis set the fire?
For now, I try to focus on the task in front of me. Finally faced with endless trains and no distracting pretenses, an uncomfortable truth comes to light. I have no idea what I’m doing. I had no plan past this moment.
There are no runes that I can see, which is surprising. All these trains, the very face of witch technology, bear no mark of them. And if I can’t study the runes, how am I going to figure out how they work? No clues to what the moving parts are, no way to engineer a different solution. Without runes, they’re not trains. They just metal shells, relics with no secrets to spill.
I pass hours in frustration, the pain in my leg becoming less bearable the longer I search in vain for clues. I need to make these work. After everything I’ve bungled up to this point, to still have made it here? There must be a way.
I explore inside the trains, outside, climb beneath their carriages. They’re smooth as ice on the outside, bare on the inside, and there’s nothing on their underside but the grooves where they fit on the tracks. I was expecting wheels the Witches turned with runes, something I could hook up to a different system and make turn my own way. But aside from the smooth-sliding doors, they don’t seem to have any moving parts at all. There’s nothing to work with. They’re just metal tubes. That’s it.
From the outside, they are metallic, but from the inside it’s like looking through a window. One with terrible glare, but a window just the same. I see the other trains through this one, and when Yarlin finally returns, I see her from within its guts.
“I brought food,” she says, setting a lopsided ceramic bowl on the ground beside the torch. “What have you found?”
I try to come up with a lie, but she reads it in my hesitation. “Don’t bother,” she says. “If it’s nothing, say nothing.”
I purse my lips. I won’t say nothing. I have to have gained something down here. What’s it to her?
She sighs and sits in front of the bowl, rolling a small bun around its edge. “Your friends are being sold to Cirrin in the morning.”
Sold to Cirrin? As slaves? I feel deceptively calm. Something gurgles below the placidity, but I don’t let it up to examine it. Not just yet. It’s too much. From wolfsons to Cirinese slaves? Absurd, impossible.
Yarlin drops the bun and folds her hands in her lap. “They came into our city and set it on fire. They were trying to destroy it.”
“They have their reasons,” I say, expecting this to draw a glare, but the look she gives me is one of pleading. Help me understand, she seems to say. Give me a way to humanize them. “Your tribe,” I say. “Your people. Are they healthy?”
She looks away. “Nobody is healthy.”
“Have you ever left Ventrin?”
She pauses. “No.”
“So then, you don’t know. It’s not like this everywhere. In Niroek, things are different. They have water. They have food.”
“Why Niroek?”
“Because.” I take a deep breath. “They still have witches.”
She frowns. “Okay, let’s assume that’s true. So what?”
It is true. I’ve seen them. “They’re the only area still thriving, and the only place that didn’t exterminate their witches. Don’t you think that means something? Doesn’t sound like a coincidence.”
She shrugs. “Niroek is a coastal nation. Its canals run deep into the land. It makes sense they’d still have water. They had a lot more of it to begin with. And with water, they can grow food.”
I pause, somewhat taken aback. “You seem to know a lot about it.”
“I hear stories.”
The torch crackles in the silence. She’s not making eye contact anymore, and that pleading tone has gone. She’s walled off now, the plight of my friends vanished from her mind. Something’s going on inside her head, something about her.
I crack the quiet with a deep sigh. “I need you to bring me to Riksher and Ennis. Will you do that?”
But she’s already shaking her head. “Hiding you here is bad enough. You want me to help you break out the strangers who attacked us?”
“I didn’t say that. I want you to take me to them, that’s all. Just get me there, and leave me to deal with the rest.”
“No attempt at diplomacy? Really?”
“If you thought I had a chance at diplomacy,” I say, “you would have brought me to your tribe, not hidden me away in an abandoned station.”
“Point.” She nudges the bowl towards me. The thick sludge inside doesn’t shift. “Eat first. Then I’ll take you where you want to go.”
#####
I was hoping Yarlin could get me to the prison unseen, but that seems less and less likely the deeper we slink into the city. If we’re caught, Yarlin will pretend I’m her prisoner, that she caught me trying to start more fires. But more commotion going in means a bigger challenge getting out, so I hope that isn’t necessary.
I begin to see faces in windows, but the narrow streets are clear. Doors are tight shut and dust blows silently over the stone.
“Where is everybody?”
She throws me a dirty look. “Hiding. We’re under attack, remember?”
The incline gets steeper as we go, the mountain rising so tall in front of me that I have to crane my neck to see it. The witch buildings thin out until the ground is too steep to build on.
I should have asked Arahna for more details about the city. Yarlin bears no resemblance to the old woman or her granddaughter. How many tribes coexisted within its walls? There’s room for a thousand Barnabs here.
“What tribe is this?”
“Tribe Ren.” Yarlin doesn’t offer up any more information, so I take her cues and keep quiet. She points to the mountain ahead of us, great and looming. A wide wooden door is set in its base, carved a little way into the stone. “We’re keeping your friends in there.”
<
br /> Someone rounds a corner in front of me and Yarlin hisses. She tries to pull me down behind a cart, but the man’s eyes widen and he yells.
“By the valley,” Yarlin mutters. She gives me a sideways look. I choose to interpret it as a pre-emptive apology for what’s about to happen.
She yanks me to my feet, hard enough that my eyes rankle in their sockets. “I found this one in the west,” she shouts to the man, whose face is almost as red as Yarlin’s hair. “I’m putting her with the others.”
The man reaches us and grabs me by the neck. My first instinct is to crush his windpipe, but I remind myself that I want to be caught. I make a show of scrabbling pathetically at his hands.
“Turrion and Liva have the west. You were supposed to be in the south-east district.”
Yarlin shrugs. “I smelled a lead and I followed it.”
The man grunts. “I’ll take it from here.”
“It’s okay. I’ve got her.” She makes to reach for me again, and the man shoves her back.
“Go home,” he says.
Yarlin’s face is carefully blank. She gives me a look I can’t decipher, then raises her hands in defeat. “Fine. She’s all yours.”
The colour of her skin had me assuming Yarlin was adopted into this tribe, perhaps at the end of the war, same as I was at Barnab. But the man watches her with deep distrust, and none of the faces in the windows emerge to defend her. Tribe Ren doesn’t consider her one of their own.
The man transfers my wrists to one hand and uses the other to force my head down so I can’t see where we’re going. I expect him to lean in close and hiss accusations in my ear, but he doesn’t address me at all, just marches me up the mountain.
We come upon the prison suddenly, with me unable to lift my head and take stock of my surroundings. He opens a heavy wooden door and shoves me through, far harder than is necessary. It slams closed behind me with the unmistakable sound of a deadbolt locking into place.
