“Gods I’m stupid,” I say, suddenly struck by how foolish I’ve been. “Stay here,” I tell them. I’m not going far.
Using my hands to navigate and sliding my feet carefully on the floor so I don’t trip on something unexpected, I make my way to the luggage racks. I feel around until I find my travelsack and I pull out my gear. I can hear the boys breathing behind me; it’s the only sound down here. Without the hum of the train and the movement of the air everything is very, very still. I wonder how long the air will last.
I tell my heart to calm down as I change into my familiar assassin’s clothes and out of the soft silks more suited to a queen’s lover. Maybe I was raised on lies, stolen from my family, but the familiar leathers and silent slippers are mine, as comfortable as my own skin and suddenly useful again. I wasn’t made to be someone else’s anything; I was made to be the Hand of the Gods, or at least one God.
Once I have my own clothes on I feel complete again, and more importantly, I have exactly what we need to help us.
“Cover your eyes,” I warn my friends, and then count to three before releasing the spell I found in one of my pouches. Two small glowing balls appear, hovering over my shoulder, twinned like our binary star and giving us a few feet of full light. Their glow extends slightly beyond that to illuminate part of the train compartment before fading.
Alexsi and Zair sit up and slowly let their hands fall. Zair looks impressed. “How long will that last?” he asks.
“As long as I need it to.” The Guild’s wizards are some of the best, and they are better even than the queen’s when it comes to spells of concealment or night time exploration, as one would expect of wizards who specialize in assassination.
“I’m going to head to the back of the train and see if I can find anything,” I tell them. “On the airship, there was a propeller that the wizards fed raw magic to keep the ship flying. I want to see if the train has anything like that, or if I can find anything obviously wrong.”
“We’re coming with you,” Zair announces.
I feel torn. I’m glad of the company but I don’t know what we’ll find; if there’s anything dangerous down here, I’m trained to take care of myself, not guard two princes.
“I can leave you with light,” I say.
Zair shakes his head. “No. I can tell you don’t know much about mechanical magic. Part of our lessons include the systems that keep our Cities running; Alexsi and I have both had at least an overview of magical infrastructure, and Alexsi paid much better attention than I did.”
Alexsi grins at him and some color returns to his cheeks. “You had other things on your mind. The girls and boys in the class were very distracting.”
“Not to mention my constant hangovers,” Zair confesses, to the surprise of no one.
Alexsi looks me in the eyes and it’s nice, now that I know not all all royals share Zair’s power, to be able to look fully into his. “I’m no expert and I’m certainly not a wizard, but if we can find what makes the train run I should be able to see what’s broken.
“Ok,” I agree after a minute. “Let’s go.”
We pass through dozens of train compartments exactly like ours and I find myself wondering again who they were meant for, since most of the actual residents of our world are as ignorant of the other Cities, and of travel, as I’d been before I met Zair. We find another dining car and Alexi picks up some snacks for us to eat as we walk. I’m out in front and the boys stay a few feet behind me as I’d asked; they can still see me and the light, but if we run into anything dangerous it will have to get through me to get to the princes.
But there’s nothing. Just row after row of empty seats until we get to the end of the seating compartments and we reach what appears to be storage or shipping crates. These new compartments are squared off inside, with no seats or bathrooms or luggage racks, just crates of various sizes with symbols on them I don’t recognize. They are made out of different materials as well; some are wood, like I’m used to seeing, but others are opaque glass or metal and there are some made out of a material I’ve never seen before, white and slippery to the touch. The guys look as confused as I am.
“Are these old? Or new?” I ask, and they shake their heads. They don’t know either. Some compartments have only wooden crates; some only glass. Then we pass through five compartments that only have the white crates, huge ones, covered in the foreign symbols.
And then we open a door to a compartment and we see exactly what’s wrong with the Night Train.
CHAPTER 14
There’s a dead wizard in the back of the train. He’s slumped over a small box and there’s a very obvious slit in his throat and quite a bit of blood everywhere. The boys come in behind me and stop in shock. I sigh in disgust.
“Messy kill.” And it is. It’s messy, it’s splashy, it’s meant to be found. It’s meant to be shocking. Sometimes, if we’re sending a message with someone’s death - not just getting them out of the way, but wanting their death to serve as a warning - we might kill like this. I never have; I hate it. I also wonder what the message is supposed to be. I know it’s for us.
“I don’t recognize the robes,” Zair says, puzzled. I look again; the wizard’s robes are not the sky blue of the City in the Sky; they are not the gray of the Assassin’s guild. I didn’t actually see the Winter City’s wizards so I look at Alexsi and he shakes his head.
“I don’t know them,” he says. So they are not from Winter or the Forest of Nevel either. The robes are a swirling blue-green with the occasional white streak. They look familiar to a very deep part of me but I don’t know, I just don’t know what they mean.
I move the body and it’s stiff, stiff as a corpse that’s been dead a half day or more. That tells me that he wasn’t killed right before the train stopped. The box he died on looks exactly like the one I saw the airship wizard feeding raw magic into on the airship. Alexsi is looking at it too.
We look around the rest of the compartment. There are small wooden crates all over. This compartment, much like ours, has a sleeping couch and a bathroom and a small food chiller. The wizard had everything he needed to run the train until someone came in here and slit his throat. I look around for any discarded weapons or other signs of the killer but I don’t see any.
Zair rummages around in the food chiller and gets out a fruit and some cheese and sits down and starts eating. Both Alexsi and I turn to look at him, incredulous.
“What?” he asks, not even a little defensively. “There’s nothing else for me to do.”
I shake my head at the prince. Except for when he’s caring for Alexsi, Zair is the single most self-centered person I’ve ever met, and I grew up with assassins.
He waves at us. “Please continue.”
I roll my eyes and keep looking around. I see something peeking out from under a crate. When I lift the crate I see it; it’s a small transport platform, gray rings just like the ones I used in the city below to get to the sky. It’s big enough for one person and I’m pretty sure it’s how the wizards get on and off the train unseen.
Alexsi and I look at each other and I nod and take out my dagger. If the killer used the transport to get on the train, and if the transport was covered and the wizard is dead…
“The murderer is still on the train,” Alexsi says.
I move to the door and stand guard.
“Can you get the train going again?” I ask Alexsi.
“I think so, just give me a few minutes. The wizard bled all over the fuel system and it ran out of magic.”
He rips off a piece of the wizard’s robe and uses it to wipe down the blood. There is so much of it that even though some of it has dried there are still wet pools that he soaks up. He gets water from the bathroom and a towel and uses that to get the dried blood too and keeps wiping until the fuel box is as clean as he can get it.
With a pragmatism that I admire Alexsi looks through the wizard’s pockets and finds two transport spells and three bulbs of raw magic.
Of course. Part of me still seethes when I see it. The people on the ground, my people, mine crystals and farm raw magic and we’re told that they are useless to us, that only wizards can process them, so we farm them and turn them over to the City and live in poverty while up on that floating island and in all the Cities they live in luxury, dripping in jewels and magic. The great lie; raw magic can be used as fuel, directly, via these boxes, and give us power and light and transportation too.
My thoughts stop abruptly as Alexsi drops the three bulbs into the box and closes the lid. He traces a symbol on the top and the symbol lights up, that blue-white color of magic, and the train hums to life again and air starts circulating and with a jerk we are moving again. We all relax, finally; maybe we won’t die down here in the dark.
I nod towards the box. “Will that be enough to get us to the Forest?” Alexsi shakes his head.
“No, but there must be more in these crates. We’re probably only a third of the way there.” He puts the transport spells in his pockets and starts opening crates. Zair jumps down and helps him while I remain at the door to the compartment. They find two crates full of raw magic and Alexsi fills the fuel box with as many as it will hold.
“This was too easy,” I find myself saying. “Whoever killed the wizard could have hidden the raw magic, or destroyed the fuel box. They weren’t trying to stop us.”
“What were they trying to do?” Zair asks. “This wasn’t random. They went to a lot of trouble to get on the train and kill the wizard. Maybe someone had a grudge against him personally? Maybe it wasn’t about us at all.”
Alexsi disagrees. “No, this is about us, but I’m not sure how. Alinya is right though, this was too easy. Maybe they wanted to delay us, or send us a warning.”
I agree, but I don’t. “When we do a messy kill it’s definitely to send a message. I can’t decide if this is a murderer or an assassin sending a message, but either way, we’re meant to know something and I don’t think we’ve found it yet. What’s in the other crates?”
Zair lifts out a handful of polished jewels to show me. Some of the other crates have ore, crystals, more magic. Definitely valuable and worth killing for, but only if you can take them. I don’t think that’s why the wizard is dead.
Then Zair opens another crate and shows it to me and Alexsi, puzzled. Inside the crate are books, leather-bound and exactly like the ones the loremasters kept in their cave. There’s a note on top of them, the same paper as the note I found on the airship. I sheathe my dagger and walk over to lift it up.
“A present for the Undying. - J”
Great.
◆◆◆
We decide to stay there for the rest of the trip. I’m worried someone will try to kill the princes; the princes are worried someone might sabotage the train. It’s awkward staying in this odd compartment together but even though it’s more austere than the passenger compartments it has everything we need in one place; no one has to leave for food or the bathroom and we can take shifts sleeping on the couch.
Alexsi keeps feeding magic to the fuel box, terrified it will run out while he’s sleeping. I stretch and do some of my exercises, the first time I’ve had to do them in front of the princes. They stare at me and then Zair says quietly at one point “It’s like watching water flow.” I take it as a compliment and bow to him. To my surprise, he bows back.
I do not tell the boys what my newest worry is; it will only bother them. We walked through this entire section of train and did not see anyone. We were never all asleep at the same time. If there is a killer on this train, we should have passed them on the way to the end of the train, or they would have had to have come through our compartment. Either the killer is spectacularly good at hiding, or they are no longer on the train, or they are one of us.
The killer couldn’t have taken the transport platform out, because the crate was on top of it.
We should have passed the killer on the way here. The other compartments were empty of life.
One of the boys could have slipped back here and killed the wizard while I was exploring the front of the train earlier, although they would have had to be very fast, running back here, killing the wizard, and running back, all without getting blood anywhere. Which reminds me. I look around the wizard’s compartment; there’s blood everywhere and no tracks.
An assassin could do it. A very very good assassin - master level - could probably even conceal themselves. I’m not master level and I don’t think I could have concealed myself that well, but maybe with the right spell…
The only other option is worse. A god could do it. A god could get on the train, kill the wizard, and leave, or hide, or turn themselves into a crate of crystals, although I have no idea why they would do any of those things.
I look at the boys and wonder if one of them did it; if one of them has an agenda they’ve not shared with the rest of us. I wonder how well I know them at all.
◆◆◆
Time passes so oddly down here. Without the rising of the suns and moons I constantly want to sleep but feel like I shouldn’t, even though there isn’t much else to do. I look around the crates some more but don’t find anything else interesting.
Alexsi makes us a meal of bread and some kind of meat with fresh greens and sour cherry jam and cheese. It’s filling and good and a nice break from the rich meals back at the palace. After we eat we decide to look at the books. Alexsi agrees with me that they look like the books the loremasters keep; when I pick one up it even has that dusty cave smell.
We make a big thing of debating whether we should read them or not; it feels sacrilegious, like reading private letters between the gods. “The loremasters hold the lore for us,” Alexsi argues.
“But these are for the Undying,” I protest. “What if there are things not meant for human eyes?”
“We don’t even know what the Undying is!” Alexsi points out, accurately. “It may be human, for all we know.”
“You think like a peasant,” Zair sneers as he opens one of the books, settling the argument. “All things are meant for us.”
But he is wrong, for the books are written in a language none of us can read.
Disappointment settles over us; even though I hesitated to read them I wanted to, I wanted to know their secrets. I didn’t get nearly enough information from my visit with the loremasters and I find myself wanting to know everything they know. Then I realize something.
“The language in the books…” I start, waiting until Alexsi and Zair look up.
“It matches the symbols on some of the crates in the other compartments.”
Curiosity drives us from our lair and the three of us head to the crates we saw. The symbols on the shiny white crates, and some of the metal ones, bear a striking resemblance to the writing in the books. We stay in the compartment next to the wizard’s, thinking that if someone means us mischief we’d see them trying to get in there. This is true in theory but we are engrossed in the crates, trying to decipher them, and then eventually trying to open them.
We look around but we see no tools, nothing that looks like it would help us open anything, just more and more crates. Alexsi is entranced by the symbols and his lips move as he looks at them. Zair and I share a look and we step back, letting Alexsi explore the largest of the white crates.
We eventually sit and I draw my dagger and start practicing hand movements with it. Zair clears this throat and I look at him and then away again.
“Alinya, I need to tell you something.” I tense, and start flipping my dagger faster.
“I’m really sorry I used my power on you, back when we first met. I uh,” he pauses, and I can tell this is hard for him. I put my knife away. “I mean, you were trying to kill me, and I think you’re probably one of the best at what you do, and it was my only way of defending myself, but I am starting to think that maybe it’s wrong. Maybe it’s wrong to control you - to control our people - like that. Alexsi says it’s wrong. My mother - the queen - and the Priestes
s both taught me that the Gods gave us this power as a sign that we are meant to rule, but I don’t know if that’s true, and even if it is - even if it is true, I don’t want to rule like that.”
I’m stunned. I sit there while he talks and I watch his face; he’s obviously in pain, as his upbringing and his beliefs are fighting a losing battle with what he’s learned from Alexsi and from me. I never expected him to say this.
“I won’t ever use my powers on you, Alinya. You can look me in the eye again and trust that I won’t use them to control you. I want you to be able to trust me; I want to be a prince that is worthy of the trust of his people, of all people.”
I look into his eyes and I see he is telling the truth. Without a word I throw my arms around him and hug him tight. A knot I didn’t know was inside me starts to unravel and my eyes feel damp.
“I’ve got it!” Alexsi shouts and we turn to him. He finishes tracing one of the symbols on the white crate and it glows briefly before splitting open at the ends and then the top and bottom as well. The top and sides of the crate turn into one piece that slides behind the former contents.
Zair and I walk over to stand by Alexsi and the three of us stare at what was inside the crate. It floats; it’s compact and made of metal and glass. It has buttons and a clear panel that is flashing red. We have no idea what it is.
Alexsi goes around the compartment, opening other crates. We find a lot of machines. Some of them look like they are made of the same material as the Night Train; others have scoops, like earth movers, and there is one that is just a box, all matte black and silver. None of it looks like it runs on magic.
We are all quiet as we go back into the wizard’s compartment. I’m thinking about what Zair said just as much as I’m thinking about the machines we’ve found; they are of equal importance to me. Alexsi feeds more magic to the train and we keep moving forward, hurtling towards some kind of inevitability on tracks laid by the gods.
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