The horse was unsteady beneath him and he turned to Katharine. "What is our path?"
"We take the railroad to Cairnajorr," she replied. "Then we’ll ride for Cairnoher."
Gravinn made a noise of exasperation. "Why wasn’t I consulted?"
"You were shopping."
"I was getting supplies."
"For a journey you didn’t yet understand."
"Is it a problem?" Tom asked, trying to interrupt the brewing argument.
Gravinn scowled before grumbling, "It will cost more to load the wagon onto the engine."
"That won't be a problem." Tom waved everyone forward. "Let’s go."
The streets of Cairnakor mirrored the mountains it had been built upon, filled with uphill slogs and downhill plods. As the city awoke, the vagrants vanished like fog burnt away by the rising sun, and the streets filled with dwarfs of two kinds, as if the city was populated with two entirely different peoples. Half seemed cut from Jarnstenn’s cloth, speaking with his accent, smoking cheap cigars and wearing cheap clothing or leather aprons in various shades of dirty brown. The other half wore much richer attire, all in deep blacks and dazzling whites, festooned with jewels at neck and wrist and finger. They walked with canes or parasols, smoked from pipes, and spoke with Gravinn's precise accent, often making loud demands of their poorer fellows that were met without question.
Perhaps that was why Tom found it unsettling that Six had adopted their style. Though he was dressed for the road, his clothes shone in black and white, and he wore a waistcoat embroidered in fanciful patterns and gloves of pure black. At Tom’s look, he said, "Why shouldn't I put Neirin's money to good use?"
"I didn't say you shouldn't."
Six nodded and looked ahead. "We performed Neirin a service. It's only right we should be paid for it."
"Right."
Six relaxed and gave Tom a grin. Perhaps he thought Tom had agreed. "Besides, the dwarfs have some remarkable artefacts." He tugged his horse closer and pulled a small metal box from his pocket. "Look." He opened it, held it out so Tom could see that inside there was a metal needle under glass, swinging around inside. "When I was a boy I was shown a trick. You rub a piece of metal on a magnet, place it in water, and it will always point north."
"Why?"
"No-one knows. My teachers called it the Mysterious Needle." Six closed it up. "Here they call it a compass and sell it alongside common knifes and such. I thought Katharine might like it."
Six bought her gifts. What had the father of her child bought her? He glanced ahead, watched her riding with Kunnustenn and Jarnstenn, who regaled her with some tale. They shared the telling with ease, never interrupting or talking over the other. What they had was reviled by many, and yet they made it look easy.
Of course, there was no child involved. No child that had been kept a secret for weeks or months.
"She wanted to tell you." Six's words were soft, gentle, but they still felt like a rebuke.
"So you knew."
The elf had the grace to look embarrassed. He nodded his head.
"How long have you known?"
Six shrugged. "She had to tell someone."
"She could have told me."
"Could she?" Six skewered him with a sharp look. The old wounds weren’t forgotten. "You seemed to care more for the sword you still carry."
Tom felt his jaw clench and a sharp retort steam up within. But the elf spoke the truth. So he sighed and said, "I wish she could have told me."
"She’s scared." As if that was Tom’s fault.
"Did she think I would hurt her?"
"She knew you would." Six turned away. Did he straighten? Ride taller in the saddle? "You’ll get her hopes up. And then you’ll disappoint her. It’s what you do."
Six’s words echoed uncomfortably with Mab’s. Don’t disappoint me, she’d said. Show me a fire to make me weak in the knees. He pushed the memory away. "You’re so sure?"
Six turned back. Sad, pitying. "What will you do when Queen Maev summons you, Tom?"
Would she? Her words had felt full of promise. A promise he didn’t want to be tempted by.
Six continued, "Katharine thinks you feel something for her. But we all know you belong to Maev."
I don’t, Tom wanted to say. I don’t belong to Maev. But the words wouldn’t pass his lips. What had Duke Ria called him? A pet. A Faerie pet.
Is that what Ria had told Katharine, when they had spoken together on the Harbour?
If Maev called, would he go to her?
"Talk to her," Six said.
"What do I say?"
The elf made a frustrated sound. "If you’re going to hurt her again, do it quickly and do it gently."
Tom shook his head. "I don’t want to hurt her." At the head of the column, Katharine laughed at something Jarnstenn said. Turned to Kunnustenn and asked him something, laughed again at the answer. She deserved to be looked after. Protected. He wouldn’t be the one to hurt her.
"Then don’t. It’s that simple."
"No." Because even if he didn’t hurt her, something else would. Something else would leave her bleeding in a dark place, where her hand grew weak in his own. "No, it isn’t."
"Why not?" Six was getting angry again.
Because she would die. And their child would die too. He couldn’t lose his little girl, not before he’d even met her. The thought tightened his chest and his head bowed under the weight of it. "Don’t."
"Why not?" Six asked. "For Oen’s sake, Tom, I’m sick of seeing her like this. She worries, she cries, she’s scared. Do something."
"I can’t."
"Why not?"
"I can’t lose her."
Those words hung heavier and smelt fouler than the fog around them. Six’s face went slack, an accusatory finger limp in the air. "You’ve had a foresight?"
Tom just nodded.
"And she dies?"
He shrugged. "She’s bleeding. A lot. Mennvinn tells me there’s nothing more she can do. Katharine’s hand grows weak in mine." He’d expected that the burden would ease once he’d shared it. But instead it grew heavy and cold within him. As if he’d given form to a nightmare, made it real by speaking its name. Just as Brega had warned him: he made things happen by foreseeing them.
Six let his hand drift to his side and he looked ahead, watching Katharine ride. "How long have you known?"
It felt like he’d lived with this foresight all his life. But, "Since we left. Since Cairnagan."
Six peered at Tom as if he’d spoken in dwarfish. "All this time?"
Tom nodded.
"Does she know?" the elf asked.
"Of course not."
"Why not?"
"What good would it do?"
"We could try to change it."
Tom sighed. "I want to." Desperately. More than anything. But, "I've warned travellers of a fatal storm, and something would force their hands to travel all the same. I've foreseen riots, only for them to be caused by the same soldiers Regent sent to quell them." Six opened his mouth to speak but Tom shook his head. "I’m scared that I’ll try to change this, and all I’ll do is upset Katharine. I’ll hurt her, and it will happen all the same."
Six’s expression softened and he nodded. When he spoke again, his tone was gentler, and all the more brutal for it. "That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try."
"I want to, Six. I do."
The elf lifted his chin. "Then try," he said. Flicked the reins and rode ahead to join Katharine and the dwarfs. Leaving Tom dejected and alone. Six made it sound so easy. As if all Tom had to do was want a thing for it to come to pass.
But he thought of that little life that lived inside Katharine, how scared it had been as they passed between Tir and Faerie and back again. Six was right. It might not be easy, but Tom had to keep his daughter safe. There was no choice, no trying. He would break the future for her. He had to.
He pulled back on his reins, drew and nervous breath and returned the nod Gravinn have him as she dro
ve the wagon past him. Only Draig rode behind the wagon, and Tom felt like the Easterner knew what he had planned as he called for Mennvinn. But Draig said nothing, and the dwarf poked her head out through the back of the wagon a moment later, a thin cigar hanging from her lips. "Do you have anything to make someone sleep?" he asked her.
She frowned. "Why?"
"Katharine, the human Pathfinder?" He waited until she nodded. "She needs to sleep." It was the only way he could leave her behind. "She carries a child."
Mennvinn’s frown grew deeper. "I would certainly recommend rest, but to give her substances? It is an unnecessary risk to the child."
He recoiled from the word ‘risk’. But what was the alternative? The risk was far greater if Katharine died. "How great a risk?"
The dwarf made an unhappy sound. "Small. But still a risk."
Tom nodded. "I’ll take it."
Mennvinn shook her head but disappeared back into the wagon. Tom was painfully aware that Draig was watching him; he refused to meet the Easterner’s eye. Mennvinn emerged a moment later with a small, dark bottle. "Soak it into a cloth and let her breathe in the fumes. Not too much," she warned as Tom took the bottle and slipped it into a pocket.
"Thank you." he told her. She disappeared back into the wagon, and Tom flicked the reins, manoeuvring past the wagon and away from Draig’s questioning look.
The fog seemed to grow thicker as the morning passed, and a burning smell joined the general stench. When the road they travelled poured down a steep hillside, Tom saw that the new stink was coming from their destination. A scar on the landscape, the railroad cut through the city, leaving rubble, wood, and ruined walls where it had torn through buildings and homes. Lairing at one end was an enormous beast of shining black metal and belching smoke, a great evil wagon that housed a fire within it, ready to haul the carriages and pallets attached to its rear. Hundreds of people bustled around it, bringing coal to the machine and loading it with goods. It gave Tom the sense of a religious idol, demanding to be waited on by its followers and stepping on them whenever it willed.
He didn't like it.
But Katharine was excited. "Isn’t it incredible?" she called back to him. "It wasn’t finished when I was last in the Provinces." Tom would have thought that was a blessing, but she grinned at the prospect of climbing aboard it. The excitement and bustle and the noise grew as they descended, dwarfs talking and shouting and laughing, making great crashes and bangs as they loaded the carriages and pallets with goods and people. The crowds were too thick. Even mounted, Tom felt the press of people, like there wasn't enough air to share.
"And we're going to get inside it?" he asked.
"Don't worry." Jarnstenn looked excited, and Tom noticed his fingers were clenching and unclenching around his reins, like he was itching to get his hands on the machine. "It's safe as houses."
Whatever that meant. Tom couldn't put his finger on why he felt uneasy about this thing. Fear of the unknown, perhaps? What was wrong with horses? "We could ride north just as easily."
"Takes longer," Jarnstenn countered. "A horse needs resting. An engine will run as long as there's coal and water. And it's faster."
Faster?
"Horse at a gallop can go maybe thirty miles in the hour," Jarnstenn continued. "Engine can easily go fifty. Maybe sixty at a push."
Twice as fast as a galloping horse. Inside a box. Hauled by a metallic beast filled with fire. "Horses seem fast enough for me," he muttered, but no-one was listening.
They came to the clearing, which Jarnstenn called a station, and was little more than an open area of plain dirt and a few planks to create a walkway for those who didn't want to get their boots dirty. The noise was deafening up close. Not only the hustle and bustle. But the engine itself. No more than a great cylinder on its side, held up with wheels as tall as a dwarf, covered in rivets and gauges and taps. Steam curled out of a chimney on its back or occasionally spat from between its wheels; it huffed and hissed like an unholy imitation of a dragon in wood and metal. It seemed impatient. Ready to fly. Twice as fast as a horse.
Katharine tried to buy their way onto a carriage from a dwarf in a leather apron. He didn't speak the human tongue and, when Katharine stumbled over the dwarfish, Gravinn interrupted. She took over the conversation with no grace, no subtlety, and Katharine scowled at her for it.
"You really wanted to ride in that?" Tom asked, more as a way of distracting her.
"Of course," she snapped. Then she sighed and her brow relaxed. "You're worried."
"I am." A thought had begun to ring in his mind, the sound of metal screaming. If a horse fell at a gallop, the rider could die. If an engine fell at twice the speed, what would happen then?
"It's safe," she told him. Her smile was forced. Her eyes still wary. "Trust me."
He couldn’t stop being worried about it. But he could nod and ask her, "How are you feeling?"
She shrugged. "Tired. Hungry."
"I'll get you something."
"It's okay," she said quickly. Why didn’t she want him to help?
She was hunched in the saddle, and he could see now that her Western shawl wasn't enough to hide her swelling belly. She searched his eyes, as if she could scry her future in them. But a door opens both ways; Tom could see her hunting for a sign he would disappoint her. Just as Six said he would.
Perhaps the elf was right. Because Tom was going to let her down. To protect her.
He opened his mouth to suggest they find somewhere to sit, to rest for a moment. Somewhere he could rent a room, lie her down, and use Mennvinn’s medicine to put her to sleep, so they could leave her behind. But he couldn’t say the words. He sat on his horse, mouth open, unable to break her trust. Not again.
And then Gravinn was bustling around them, urging them to dismount, leading their horses up a ramp, organising a team of dwarfs to push their wagon up into a carriage where it was lashed down with straps. What was that for? Would they have to be lashed down too?
"They’re only to keep the wagon secure," Gravinn assured him. And when Tom turned around, Six was helping Katharine into another carriage. Giving him a pointed look as he did so. That was Tom’s place. To look after the mother of his child.
And just like that, his opportunity was missed. He couldn’t decide if he was relieved or angry with himself.
"Gonna stare at it all day or get on?" Jarnstenn asked.
Tom just nodded, touched Caledyr and climbed onto the train.
The carriage was long, cramped, the ceiling just as low as every other in this city, and a narrow gangway cut between cramped wooden benches with soft red cushions.
"How long are we in here for?" He sat on a bench but it forced his knees up to his chest.
"It's a ten hour journey to Cairnajorr," Gravinn told him.
Ten hours. He couldn't stay in here for ten hours. He couldn't.
A groan cut through his rising panic and he saw Draig and Dank struggling to get Emyr on board. They held him in a blanket, much like Tom and Neirin had carried Brega, and with a shrug Draig lowered the old king to the floor. There was no room on a bench. Where else could they put him?
"We can’t leave him there for ten hours," Tom growled. He told everyone to hand over their blankets and began to fold them and lay them further down the aisle. "Lay him here."
"No." Emyr's protests were feeble but they moved him anyway, before covering him in another blanket and putting more under his head. Tom wiped the sheen of sweat from Emyr's face, knowing it was nothing to do with the temperature.
"Can you give him anything for the pain?" he asked Menvinn.
The dwarf settled herself next to Emyr as best she could; there was no more room in the aisle so she climbed over a bench to sit by his head, her little case next to her. She pulled out a small bottle and said, "Give him two drops. No more."
Two drops of anything didn't seem enough but Tom obeyed, letting two tiny pearls of milky fluid drip into Emyr's too-eager mouth. It pained Tom to see
him like this. Had it been a mistake, to bring him back to Tir? He seemed to suffer more now than he ever did.
"It will be a long road to recovery," Menvinn confirmed. "But don't worry."
The old king's eyes were pinched shut and his brow pulled a hundred lines into existence, making him look old and beaten. "All I can do is worry," Tom replied. "There’s nothing else I can do for him."
"That's why I'm here." Menvinn gave him a strong smile, one that seemed to reach inside him and touch his concern. He couldn't help but smile back. None of his worries were gone. But they were easier to live with in that moment. He looked up at Ambrose, sat on a bench by himself, watching them all.
"Does he get better?" Tom asked him.
"He will," Menvinn said, but Tom needed to hear it from Ambrose. He needed the certainty.
"He will stand and walk and fight," he replied.
"So he survives," he said, trying to turn the old man's dead, hollow words into the reassurance he sought.
"That all depends on you." Ambrose closed his eyes. He was so pale, so thin and wasted, he could be dead.
Tom watched Emyr's breathing relax and slow until he began to snore. He slept through the jolting start of the train, the screaming whistle as they began to move, and the horrendous, rapid pant of the engine over the screeching wheels beneath them. Tom wondered if Mennvinn could be persuaded to grant him a few drops of something, but he said nothing. Just gripped the top of the bench in front of him and tried not to think about it. Any of it.
The railroad wound its way between the hills and mountains of the Provinces, sometimes rolling over grand bridges that spanned great valleys, other times plunging through the slopes into dark, echoing tunnels, into the noisy earth itself. They stopped occasionally in towns where goods and people were loaded and unloaded. Tom would gaze out of the window and try to spot a fay staring back. But he never did. Soon the sun was set and they travelled under a pregnant moon and a clear sky, the stars above joined by the flickering, distant lights of farmhouses and villages scattered across the mountainsides. The carriage grew colder as the moon rose but it couldn't affect Tom's ability to rest; the sheer, relentless drive of the engine beneath his feet was too frightening. No-one else seemed to mind; their entire party seemed to be sleeping peacefully.
The Realm Rift Saga Box Set Page 77