Mutt

by Evan Fuller

  7

  Jump

  He had never taken one of the outsiders past the gates of the manor; only Lydia with her forged documentation had seen the rest of Rittenhouse. Each of the city's myriad streetlights threatened to reveal Timothy's mixed features. He was wearing a hooded jacket under Emery's overcoat, but Emery still feared that some passer-by would see that Timothy looked markedly different than any of Rittenhouse's populace. “What's your village like?” he asked Timothy, as much to distract himself from his worry as out of curiosity.

  “It's called Manoa,” Timothy said, “for one of the old roads that ran nearby. A bit of it's been restored, but for the most part, all that's left of the road is signs and rubble. It's all overgrown with forest around there now, and Manoa was built in the trees.”

  “In the trees?” Emery echoed. “You mean beneath the trees, or actually in the trees?”

  “In,” Timothy repeated. “All the houses and other buildings are above the ground, with walkways connecting them. It can be a bit dangerous for the young kids, but it protects us from dogs and most thieves, and there's good hunting up there. With a slingshot and a few bits of asphalt from where the road used to be, you can hit a couple squirrels or pigeons pretty easy.”

  “Do you have a school there? You speak more fluidly than most of the people I've met from outside.”

  “No,” the boy replied, “but we have a few books. Our parents try to teach us at least a bit of reading. They say it's one of the things that sets Manoa apart from a lot of the other nearby villages. We pay Zakarova's men a tax to keep peace with them, but we don't do any work for them, and we don't let things like poppy gum into our town.” He smiled. “I'm the oldest of five,” he said. “Before I left, I was teaching my sister Esther to read. I wonder if she's still learning…” He trailed off. “My mom and dad did everything they could for me, but when it came to leaving the village to find medicine, they had to stay with the younger kids. Otherwise I'm sure they'd be here now.”

  Emery's worry grew more and more pronounced as he and Timothy moved southwest towards the market. The trek was thankfully short; in just a few minutes, the commercial district's hive of electric lights shone before them. But this was the part that worried Emery the most: how were they supposed to pass through that brightly lit place without being noticed? Invisible fingers tightened their grip on his gut.

  “Damn.” Emery peered at the market, hoping it might reveal to him some way to reach their destination safely. “I'm not sure we're going to make it if we go straight through.”

  Timothy shrugged. “Why don't we just go around? We'll find the tracks and then trace them back to the station.”

  Emery felt a tinge of embarrassment that this boy five years his junior was managing to stay calm while he was handling himself so poorly. “Yeah. Okay.”

  “What did Lydia say to you before we left?” Timothy asked. “You know, when the two of you stepped out of the room.”

  Emery glanced at Timothy, taken aback. His expression was apparently an unpleasant one; Timothy shrank. “I'm sorry, I know it's none of my concern. I didn't mean to upset you—”

  Emery made a conscious effort to rearrange his features in a less intimidating way. “The question does upset me, but that's my fault if it's anyone's.” Emery had gone as far towards the market as he was willing to venture; he turned, and the two headed northwest toward the tracks.

  “Since you asked,” Emery said, “and since it will distract me from the imminent possibility of our being caught by the Unity guards, the story goes something like this.” Another shade of apprehension contorted his stomach. “Lydia and I knew each other, but only in passing, before either of us came to Rittenhouse. I left Ambler in the conventional way, sent here by my parents to manage my cousin's property and correspondence after he died. There was a bit of a disruption with my journey, which is how I met the king, but I'll leave that part of the story for another time. But anyway, a few months after I got here, Lydia was exiled from Ambler.”

  Emery paused, trying to think of how to phrase the next part, until Timothy asked the obvious question: “Why was she exiled?”

  “Well, you know that people in both Rittenhouse and Ambler think very highly of pedigree. And I'm sure you noticed that while both Lydia and I are purebloods, we look totally different from one another. That's because there are four distinct groups of purebloods; we call them circles. The circles all coexist amicably, but there are certain lines you can't cross with someone of another circle.” Emery realized that he was sweating despite the cold wind; he raised a gloved hand to wipe his forehead. “Lydia was exiled for…well, for an inter-circle indiscretion.”

  Timothy nodded, clearly knowing better than to pry. “But someone exiled from one city isn't allowed in the other either?” he asked instead.

  Emery shook his head. “There's a bit of a precedent for that. Several years back, a Vorteil faction in Ambler tried to overthrow the four-circle government and take full control of the city. After that, all the Vorteil from Ambler were exiled, not just the ones who had participated in the coup. They came here, but after intense debate, it was decided that it would be too great a liability to let them come in. That decision caused a lot of tension…” he scratched his head. “What were we talking about?”

  “Lydia?” Timothy suggested helpfully.

  “Oh, right. When the king found her, he sent her here,” Emery continued. “She was the first refugee to seek haven with me. We spent a lot of time together and grew close quickly, but she was still raw from what she'd left behind in Ambler, so neither of us was consciously pursuing the other like that. There was always that element, though, but I guess we never really addressed it…” he shrugged as if to shake off the mounting frustration and confusion that surfaced with the story's retelling. “I'm really not sure what happened. When I tried to turn it into something, she wasn't ready; when she was ready, I was ambiguous. I got scared that it would get in the way of the work I'm doing, so I hesitated. I guess for a bit too long. She's seeing someone in town now. A Farsi.” A scumbag, he wanted to add. “Of course, it's kind of doomed, since he'd need approval from Ambler to marry her or anything, and then her forged documentation won't get her very far. I guess we'll see how it plays out.” Emery sighed.

  “Hey, look.” Timothy motioned ahead. “Tracks.”

  Emery had been so absorbed in telling his story that he'd forgotten where they were. He realized that Timothy had intended this in posing the initial question. “I like how you did that,” he said.

  Timothy allowed a rare smile; Emery took a moment to admire the younger boy's perceptiveness. “Alright,” he said, we're going to have to be methodical about this.”

  To the right of the direction they were facing, Emery could see Rittenhouse's north wall in the distance. Unity guards with rifles patrolled the wall, but their focus was beyond, outside the city. The land immediately inside the wall was one of the last undeveloped areas in Rittenhouse, a graveyard of ancient structures half-standing among scattered trees. Emery noted that it would be an interesting place to visit under other circumstances; he wondered how long it would remain untouched before some mogul planted a housing development upon it. To Emery and Timothy's left, about a hundred yards down the track, they saw the engine of the train they were to board. The platform on either side of the train tracks was awash in electric light and teeming with motion as workers ferried packages to and from the cars of the train.

  “I don't know how we're going to be able to get to the platform without alerting someone,” Emery began. “Maybe there's a way to—”

  A deafening horn cut his sentence short, and the circular light on the front of the train engine ignited. With a groan of weary metal, the wheels began to spin.

  “I'll be damned…okay, change of plans. How fast do you think that thing will be moving by the time it gets to where we are now?”

  Timothy was bewildered. “How should I know? I told you I've never ridden a
train.”

  “Well,” Emery said, “I hope your parents taught you how to pray.” He grabbed Timothy's hand and ran in the opposite direction of the train, towards the ruins that stood before the city wall.

  “Where are we going?” Timothy shouted.

  “That train isn't taking cargo, not at this time of night.” Emery gasped for breath as he strained to run and talk at the same time. “It's moving the night shift guards to Fairmount. So if that light shines on us…” He inhaled deeply. “…we're done. We have to take cover in those ruins, and when the last car is about to pass, we make a run for it.”

  “Why does this sound like a bad idea?”

  They were finally to the ruins; Emery doubled over with his hands on his thighs. “Everyone is so damn critical today,” he panted.

  They ducked behind the wall closest to the tracks. It trembled as the roaring train drew closer; Emery added to his anxieties the chance that it might fall and crush them. At least then, though, they wouldn't have to take the suicidal leap onto a moving train. But there was no such luck; as the first cars flew by, the wall held.

  “Alright,” he called to Timothy over the din, “Ready…Go!”

  They rose from their hiding place and sprinted straight for the wall of motion and sound before them. Emery saw that now, at least, their luck was good: the last car on the train was a flatcar, designed for transporting large containers but presently unoccupied. With any luck, they should be able to—and then they reached the train and there was no more time for deliberation. Emery leapt toward the great moving mass and felt the sickening impact of the metal surface against his stomach. He pushed himself upward and rolled onto his back, dazed and bruised but uninjured. He lay there until he heard a shout of “Help!”

  Timothy was still dangling on the side of the train, unable to lift himself onto it. Emery grabbed Timothy's hand and laboriously hoisted him onto the platform. Timothy tried to stand, but the torrent of wind moving over the flatcar nearly knocked him off it. “Stay down,” Emery yelled, motioning for Timothy to imitate his position.

  The two of them lay on their backs, trembling in the deafening motion and cold, and Emery looked upward at the sky: the thick brown haze of Rittenhouse was gone, replaced by a lucid black infinity housing countless pinpoints of light. The gate through which the train had passed closed behind them with a thunderous crash. The riflemen on the walls continued their patrols, oblivious to the two small figures that, from their vantage, could just have easily have been inanimate cargo. The train picked up speed; by the time it moved beyond the snipers' range, it was moving far too quickly for anyone to attempt what Emery and Timothy had just done. The displaced air rushing around them drowned out the sounds of their voices, so Emery lay silent on the platform, watching the stars. But after less than a minute, far sooner than Emery had expected, the familiar sludge of light pollution entered his field of vision again.

  Emery rolled onto his stomach and touched Timothy's arm, motioning to him that it was almost time. Timothy's eyes widened slightly, but he did not hesitate. The two of them edged towards the side of the flatcar until Emery could see the train's destination. In less than a minute, the train would pass inside the razor-wire fence that divided the denizens of New Providence from Rittenhouse's food supply. They would have to jump before it got that far…but the train was still moving at a terrifying speed. The line of trees that bordered the track appeared to be a solid wall; Emery was sure that they would not survive if they struck them.

  “There!” Timothy shouted. The headlight of the train had illuminated a small pond. It would break their fall, but it was far too close to the fence. Emery shook his head. “We don't have a choice!” Timothy called back, his voice all but lost between the sounds of the wind and the train and Emery's lightning heartbeat. They were drawing so close to Fairmount that the floodlights illuminated Timothy's face; if a guard happened to glance this way, doubtless he would see them now.

  “Okay,” Emery said. Timothy nodded. “Ready?”

  “Jump!”

  A gunshot split the night as they plummeted into blackness.