The wind caught her as she jumped and spread her wings. She narrowly missed one of the broken trees and beat furiously, trying to gain enough altitude to get over the dangerous treetops. Too light— she was too light, even though her strained shoulders and back were already protesting at the effort of balancing her weight. She kicked down her tailset, sliding her legs up to take some of the pressure off her back, and squinted against the pelting ice. The mechanisms in her armature were pulling and she felt a drag that suggested her feathers weren’t in alignment, but nothing could be done about it, and she had to fly.
No moon or stars were visible to guide her, but she saw glimmers of light below. Amcathra wasn’t the only one moving in the woods. Other survivors at the front of the train were carrying torches and lanterns, as well. They were all but impossible to see through the blowing snow.
The wind shifted and she struggled against it, searching the dark, featureless horizon. They’d been close to the cable lift station, but she had no idea where she was. Up— the train had been climbing up, so the station must be up, but in the middle of the storm and darkness, she was completely disoriented.
Cold air tore into her chest and she coughed.
This was madness, and somewhere below her, Cristof was hurt.
There— she saw a light glimmering well away from the crash. She fought toward it, unable to predict the tumultuous winds, hampered by the pull and drag of her battered armature. Tears blinded her and ice stung her face. Her bare hands were numb as she clutched the cold metal handles of her wings. No, the light! — where did it go? Gone? — no, there it was, flickering through something, trees maybe, but was it the wreck or the station? For all Taya knew, she was flying in circles.
The light blinked in and out.
She had to get higher, but there were no warm air currents to ride. Instead, she battled for every inch of progress, straining to ascend against a storm that wanted to dash her into the treetops. A cut on her face cracked open and she tasted blood.
The exalted was bleeding.
If Cristof died — if he was dead — the thought was like staring into an empty, bottomless chasm, and she mentally recoiled, focusing on the horizon.
The dark treetops dropped away and at last she saw the light she’d been tracking— an incandescent flare reflected by a giant parabolic mirror. She could just barely hear the chugging of the generator that powered it.
The cable-haul station was equipped with a military signaling station, and it was being used.
Her breath catching in a grateful sob, Taya veered and tacked against the tossing winds. As she drew nearer she saw train tracks, a cleared cliff incline where the cars were to be hauled up to the second set of rails, and men waving torches, signaling her. They were already on the lower tracks, next to some kind of warehouse — was it a search party? Had they heard — of course they’d heard the wreck.
She dived, buffeted by the winds and blinded by the ice and snow. A graceful landing was out of the question. Now, at last, the extra counterweights might do her some good. Men and women scattered as she twisted and backbeat, preparing for a sliding landing that was going to hurt like hell because she wasn’t wearing any knee pads. She aimed for what she hoped was a muddy patch to the side of the train tracks and arched her aching, protesting back.
Mud and sleet, yes, but rocks, too— the leather of her flight suit tore across her knees, and then she was surrounded by famulates and lictors picking her up and asking where the train had derailed. She slid her arms out of the wings, carelessly letting them float around her.
“Fifteen, twenty minutes away,” she gasped, pointing the way she had come, or at least what she thought was the way she’d come. “A steep switchback. Hurry!”
Shouts, directions. A man in a parka with a famulate’s circular castemark on his forehead was steadying her.
“The exalted? Is he all right?”
She gave him a terrified look. Lieutenant Amcathra’s warning echoed through her head.
“He’s hurt. Bleeding. You have to do something.”
“The exalted’s injured!” he bellowed, turning. “Get Marchand down there, fast!”
The workers had dragged a cart onto the rails, a miniature engine pulling a platform loaded with boxes. At the man’s shout, the searchers riding it released the brakes and it shot forward faster than a man could run.
“What about the others?” the famulate asked, steadying her.
“I don’t know.” She shuddered, clutching his lapel. “Rikard’s dead. There’s a gunman— someone was shooting. Amcathra’s hurt— I think he broke his leg. Cristof’s bleeding. You have to help him.”
“We will,” he said, pulling his coat out of her grip. She let the heavy, fulled wool slide through her numb fingers and leaned over, nauseous. Gusts of wind yanked her loose wings back and forth, jarring her.
“Stefan,” she heard the man say, “get the icarus inside.”
“No…” she straightened up, her head pounding. “I need Cris.” She had to get back. She had to make sure her husband was alive.
“Wings up, Icarus,” someone else said, not unkindly. She blinked her dizziness away. A young man, as young as Rikard, his face filled with sympathy.
Oh, Lady, Rikard!
She turned, dazed, remembering Rikard’s blank blue eyes. The workers were hauling a second rail-cart out of the warehouse, rattling it onto the tracks from a short spur and stoking the fire inside its miniature metal engine. Sleet hissed and melted against the steel.
“Icarus.” A hand on her arm. Stefan. “Your wings. They’ll get damaged in this wind.”
She groped for the arm struts and slid her arms inside until she could lift and lock the wings tight against her body. The armature and counterweights in her suit tugged upward, trying to pull her back into the wind.
“I’ll show you where they are,” she volunteered.
The leader looked up and shook his head.
“Stefan, talk some sense into her.”
The youth laid the back of his hand against her cheek. She could barely feel it.
“You’re in shock, Icarus. You look like hell, and you’re shaking so hard I’m surprised you can stand. Come inside and get warm.”
“No!” She turned as the cart’s searchlight switched on and staggered to the shallow wagon behind the engine. “Take me with you.”
The workers glanced at her, then away, searching for guidance. Their boss shrugged.
“We don’t have time to argue. Stefan, watch her. Let’s get this thing rolling.”
Taya huddled with the workers, her cut and bruised hands numb as she gripped the sides of the wagon. Her appointed guardian crouched beside her, his parka hood pulled close around his face.
The brakeman released his lever and they began to chug forward, slowly at first, then gaining speed. Taya closed her eyes, every muscle straining against the cold and her own impatience, and prayed.
It didn’t seem long before she heard the brakes squeal again. Someone laid a hand on her shoulder. She only realized it when he shook her.
“We’re getting off,” Stefan said in her ear. “We’ll walk while the engineer eases the cart down.”
She opened her eyes and climbed out.
The railcart’s bright lamp picked out the steep hill below and the terrible scar where one of the rails had broken. The train’s wreckage sprawled beyond it, a twisted and horrific shape that glittered in the darkness against the whirling snow and dark pines.
The first rescue cart had stopped above the broken rail, its light shining on the last of the derailed cars— their car, the ambassadorial car, with its splintered wood paneling and once-cheerful paint. Figures sat or laid next to it, wrapped in blankets.
“Cris….” Taya scrambled down the slope, her boots slipping on ice-covered gravel and soil. The rest of the rescuers were with
her, though, moving just as quickly, carrying lanterns and backpacks.
She found Amcathra sitting on a leather trunk while one of the rescue workers splinted his ankle. Taya staggered to a halt, her breath a lung-shredding plume of white.
“Where—”
“She’s looking for someone named Cris,” a voice explained, panting almost as hard as she was. She spared a second’s glance to see Stefan stopping next to her and leaning over, puffing. “Wouldn’t stay at the station.”
“He is alive.” Amcathra turned, making the man wrapping his splint protest, and grabbed her wrist. Taya was too tired to be shocked by the ferocity of his grip. “Stay here. A doctor is examining him.”
“I need—” She tried to tug her arm away, but even if she hadn’t been counterweighted, the Demican lictor was larger and stronger than she was. “I need to see him.”
“You will only be in the way, Icarus.” His grasp was as relentless as his voice.
She stopped struggling, searching his black-striped face for some indication that he was holding back bad news, trying to shield her from the worst. But Amcathra was nothing if not honest. If Cris were dead, Amcathra would tell her.
She sank into a crouch next to him, drained.
“Lictor,” Stefan said, “I was told to keep an eye on her, but if you could…”
“Yes. Go.”
They sat motionless. The freezing wind insinuated itself into the rips in Taya’s flight suit. The rescue worker finished with Amcathra’s ankle and stood.
“Good enough for now, Lieutenant,” he said. “We’ll do a better job up top. I think it’s just sprained.”
“Thank you.”
“You need any help, Icarus?”
She looked up at the stranger.
“How’s Cris?”
“Who?”
“Exalted Forlore,” Amcathra clarified.
“I don’t know. Doctor Marchand’s taking care of him.”
She started to move, and Amcathra’s grip tightened.
“Do you need any help?” the rescuer repeated, holding his bundle of bandages.
“No.”
He nodded and moved away, looking for anyone else who needed his attention. Amcathra made no attempt to stand, his gloved hand locked around Taya’s wrist. Lanternlight cast the hard planes of his face in unforgiving chiaroscuro. Taut, pained lines were carved around his mouth.
“I’m sorry,” she said, shaken out of her self-absorption. “I’m sorry about Rikard.”
“He killed Petre.”
“Who—”
“Petre. One of my lictors.” Amcathra’s voice was as cold as the weather around them.
“Oh, Lady.” Tears stung her eyes. “I’m sorry. Rikard— he was looking for Cris. When the train started to roll, he tried to hold me, but we were torn apart and I blacked out.”
Amcathra released her wrist to pull his torn coat closer around him. She was dismayed by the expression on his face.
“His mother is my sister.”
She swallowed.
“I know. He told me. And he told me about his sister….”
Amcathra didn’t say anything else. Taya tried to stand, staggered as her cold-stiffened muscles failed to respond, and grabbed the edge of the box to push herself to her feet.
“What happened to Cris?” she asked, bracing for the answer.
“He was standing next to a dining car window when the train derailed. A branch drove through the glass. The broken glass struck him.”
She drew a sharp breath. Amcathra touched her sleeve, a mute warning that he would stop her again if he needed to.
“Your presence will change nothing.”
“But—” She couldn’t say it. But if he dies….
Her presence would still change nothing. Except she’d be with him at the end.
She’d seen Cristof thrown into an abyss and shot at by terrorists, but she’d never felt as helpless to save him as she did now.
“H-how bad is it?”
“He was bleeding and unconscious when the train stopped moving. One of the seamstresses helped me bind the worst of his lacerations. A sharp piece of glass was driven through his left hand— we left it in place. One of his lenses had broken over his left eye. We did not dare to remove the glass.”
Taya’s knees weakened again. She sat in the snow next to the lictor, clutching the hand he’d laid on her sleeve. That horrible black chasm loomed before her again— the thought of life without her husband.
“He is alive,” Amcathra reminded her. “He is in a doctor’s care.”
“I know.” She leaned her head against the lieutenant’s arm, fighting back her tears. If Amcathra could remain stoic in the face of his nephew’s death, how dare she cry just because her husband was injured? “I know. I’m sorry. I can’t help it. I love him. I thought we’d be safe in Ondinium. I thought we were all safe.”
Amcathra shifted, but he didn’t pull his arm away. Taya wanted him to say something to reassure her, but he remained silent.
Of course. Because no matter what she’d thought, they were clearly not safe.
“What about the others?” she asked after a moment.
“I think one of the tailors will not survive.”
“Jayce?” She dug her fingers into his arm.
“He was unconscious when I left. He may have broken his arm.”
She relaxed, minutely.
“Get ’er ready to move; we got the exalted!” someone bellowed. Taya’s head snapped up. Four rescuers carrying a stretcher appeared out from the trees. She leaped to her feet, nearly fell, then stumbled forward.
“Give us room, Icarus,” one of the stretcher-bearers snapped, holding out an arm to block her way. She stared at Cristof’s pallored face, half-hidden by bandages and sticking plaster. One heavily bandaged arm had been tied down across his chest, but a blanket covered the rest of his body. Someone had cut his shirt sleeve open.
“I’m riding with him,” she declared, struggling to keep pace as they marched up the incline beside the tracks.
“And I,” Amcathra said, behind her.
Taya turned.
“Your ankle—”
“He said it was only a sprain.”
“He said he thought it was a sprain!” Taya grabbed his arm, steadying him. The lictor couldn’t lean on her while she was wearing her armature, but she did her best to support him as he stubbornly worked his way up the hill beside her. “No, wait, stop a minute.”
“Why?”
“You’ll walk better if you’re lighter.” She unbuckled her flight belt with numb fingers and tugged it out through its loops and brackets. Clutching the belt with one hand, she worked at it with her other hand and teeth, pulling on the straps and buckles to lengthen it. “Here.”
Amcathra buckled the belt around his waist and continued forward. They reached the rail-cart just as the rescuers were running ropes across the stretcher to keep Cristof’s prone body in place on the railcart bed.
“Hold his stretcher,” one of the men ordered. “And keep his arm still.”
She climbed on. Amcathra pulled himself up to the other side of the stretcher and let out a hiss of pain as he sat.
Taya touched Cristof’s blanket-covered chest, reassuring herself that he was breathing. Then she ran a hand over his hair and bit her lip as her fingers encountered sticky blood and splinters of glass.
Four other injured men were put into the cart. Jayce, whose right arm was in a sling, sat next to the unconscious tailor. He stretched out his left hand and Taya grasped it.
“Don’t worry, Taya,” Jayce said. “He’ll be all right.”
Suddenly, she wasn’t able to hold back her tears anymore.
Chapter Ten
The South Alpha Incline cable-haul station housed fifteen railway
workers, four lictors, and one physician in the barracks-like simplicity of its solid stone construction. The government could have blasted a long series of switchbacks out of the cliff, but it preferred to take the time and effort to haul train cars up the steep hill by cable-pull and transfer them to a new set of tracks. Ensuring that no train could travel straight from the borders to the capital was one of the nation’s many safeguards against enemy invasion.
With a commanding view of the surrounding mountains, the cable-haul station also served as one of the hundreds of signal stations built across Ondinium, its bright, incandescent lamp and parabolic reflector ready to convey messages across the mountainous nation. Right now it was alerting M-O Terminal to keep other trains off the track until the broken rail was repaired and informing stations farther up the line that the train had crashed and the exalted was injured.
Taya sat by the stationmaster’s bed, which had been made available for her husband, listening to the distant rumble of the station’s engine and the low, urgent conversations outside the room. Cristof had gained consciousness twice, but only for a few seconds each time. It was enough to give her hope, but not enough to alleviate her dreadful sense of loneliness.
All the things that exasperated her about her husband — his social awkwardness, his tumultuous moods, his gearhead enthusiasm for machines — and all the things she admired about him — his intelligence, his wry humor, his dedication, and his bravery — had suddenly become impossibly dear to her. Taya studied his bloody, bandaged face, dreadfully cognizant of how central he’d become in her life and how empty she would feel without him.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t known she’d loved him. Of course she’d loved him; she couldn’t have put up with him if she hadn’t loved him. But theirs wasn’t the kind of grand, destined love affair described in the thick romance novels Cassie bought. They had to work at their marriage with humor and patience. Sometimes, the marriage took a lot of effort.
Taya ran her fingers over Cristof’s unbandaged right hand, feeling a lump in her throat.
Some things were worth the effort, though.
Two hours had passed since the crash. Five men had died: Rikard, Petre, Tailor, the engineer, and the conductor. Many more were badly injured.
Clockwork Lies: Iron Wind (Clockwork Heart trilogy) Page 14