She had a hypodermic needle and the leftover morphine tucked into one of her flight suit pockets. As soon as they were back at camp, she’d give him a shot and let him sleep through the train ride home.
Amcathra returned after what felt like a very long time.
“Is anyone in there?”
“Two men are playing cards by a stove. They are not paying attention to the yard.”
They skirted around the train shed. The yard between them and the fence was filled with lifting and loading equipment, a series of dark silhouettes against the snow and moon. Amcathra led them through to a small building by the gate and stopped at the door.
“Exalted.”
Cristof handed the lictor his lantern and shrugged off his backpack. Amcathra turned the lantern’s narrow beam on the door lock as the exalted pulled off his gloves and rummaged through the pack. In a moment he’d removed his toolkit and the ridiculous headpiece.
“No wonder your pack is so heavy,” Taya muttered.
Cristof ignored her, snapping one of the lenses down and starting to work on the door with his tiny tools. He breathed on his fingers once or twice to warm them as he manipulated the tumblers, but at last the lock clicked open. He stepped back and snapped up the lens with a look of satisfaction.
Amcathra opened the door and slid inside. Taya waited behind while her husband tucked everything back into his pack.
“Does he always make you pick the locks?” she whispered, handing him his gloves.
“Not always.”
“And did your new … tool … make it easier?”
“Yes.” He shot her a look that dared her to say anything. Taya forbore, although it took some effort.
Inside, Amcathra set the lantern on the table, its narrow beam turned on a row of wooden filing cabinets. The dark office was cold, but not as cold as the air outside.
“You search. I will guard,” he said, waving Cristof forward. The exalted laid his backpack and gloves on the table and began skimming through the files. Taya pulled up a chair and straddled it wrong-way-forward to accommodate her wings as she read over his shoulder.
For a few minutes the only sound in the office was that of drawers opening and closing and pages being flipped. Taya wanted to help, but it was a one-man job, and Cristof knew his way around business records better than she did.
“Here,” he said, laying a folder on the desk. “This is a new shipment to the shell company. Will you add it to our list?”
“Sure.” She leaped up, grateful to have something to do, but was stymied when she realized the ink in the bottle on the front desk had frozen solid. A bit of searching unearthed a short, paper-wrapped graphite pencil. She began copying dates, order numbers, and business names onto a blank sheet of paper.
Cristof set another file in front of her and returned the first to the cabinet. Taya worked as fast as she could with cold fingers.
“What’s being shipped?” she asked as she wrote.
“Nothing prohibited.” Cristof opened another folder. “But what’s listed on the bill of lading isn’t necessarily what’s in the crates.”
“Can we check the crates?”
“I hope so.” He closed the folder. Taya finished writing and handed him the file she’d been copying. He put it away and opened the next. His eyes lit up. “Perfect!”
“What?”
“The next shipment to the shell corporation is scheduled for tomorrow.” He reached inside his coat to check his pocket watch. “Today. In a few hours, as a matter of fact.”
Taya thought of the freight cars in the shed. “Do you think it’s already been loaded?”
“Almost certainly.” He copied out the last entry himself. Amcathra was already slinging his rifle over his shoulder and straightening up the chairs they’d moved.
“Do not forget that there are men in the train shed,” the lictor cautioned. “You must search the cars very quietly. I will keep watch and subdue the watchmen if they investigate.”
Cristof nodded, putting the last folder away and closing the file cabinet. Taya picked up the list she’d drawn up, hesitated, and handed it to the lictor. Lieutenant Amcathra was the least likely to be searched if they were caught by AME’s security guards.
They left the office door unlocked and retraced their route to the train shed, Amcathra in the lead. He paused by the shed, listening. Taya heard desultory conversation and the riff of cards being shuffled. The lictor moved onward, taking them to the shed’s back door. Taya held her breath as they sneaked inside, expecting to be caught any moment.
Holding his lantern low, Cristof checked the labels on the crates stacked up around the rear car, then shook his head.
Amcathra pointed to himself, then to the front of the shed, and vanished around the other side of the tracks. Taya and Cristof waited for a silent count to ten, then slowly, carefully slid the metal boxcar door open. Several times it rattled and grated on the tracks, and they froze, hearts pounding. Nobody noticed, though, and at last they’d opened a gap wide enough to slip through.
Cristof entered the boxcar first, taking the lantern with him. Taya shrugged her wings back up into high position and wiggled in after him, careful to keep the tips from scraping against the top of the doorframe.
Destinations were stenciled on the sides of each wooden crate. None matched the bill of lading. Disappointed, they slid out and moved to the next car. Amcathra was nowhere to be seen, but the voices from the front hadn’t changed.
The second car held the payload. Cristof set his lantern on top of a crate as Taya slipped back out into the shed to pick up a crowbar.
“I’ll do it,” she whispered when she returned. Cristof stepped back without a word.
His wounds must really be hurting, she thought, jimmying the flat end of the crowbar between the wooden lid and the top of the case. She leaned on the steel bar and felt her boots leave the boxcar floor.
“Scrap!” She dropped back down, scowling. Cristof gave a muffled laugh and shrugged off his backpack. He pulled out the flat lead weights she’d removed from her belt earlier.
“You shouldn’t be carrying those,” she hissed. No wonder he’d fallen so heavily off the fence. She fumed at Amcathra for letting her husband be so stupid.
Cristof leaned over and kissed her forehead, oblivious to her pique. Reminding herself to scold the lictor later, Taya slid the lead ingots back into her belt. This time when she leaned against the crowbar, her feet stayed on the floor. The nails squealed as they tore out of the wood and she stopped, certain that the sound must have been heard across the entire shipping yard.
Her pulse slowed when nobody shouted or came to investigate. Working more carefully, she loosened the rest of the nails in the lid. Both she and Cristof lifted it up and leaned it against another crate.
Straw rustled as her husband rummaged through it. He pulled out a piece of paper, glanced at it, and handed it to her.
“This is it,” he whispered, digging in the box again. The name on the bill of parcel matched the name on the bill of lading.
So now the question was whether the crate really contained innocuous steel pipes or something more sinister.
Cristof grunted as he tried to pull a long, oilcloth-wrapped object out from under the straw. Taya tucked the bill of parcel into a pocket and helped. The inner swathes of fabric were covered with oil that left their fingers sticky.
“It is a pipe,” Taya whispered, disappointed.
“Bring the lantern over here.” Cristof tilted the tube up while Taya held the light over his shoulder. “It’s rifled.”
“What does that mean?” The pipe was far too big for a rifle.
“That it’s the barrel to a very big weapon,” he whispered. He laid it down and began rummaging through the crate again. “There are more in here.”
“So they are selling weapons to A
lzana!”
“Let’s put everything back and tell Janos.”
“Why do we have to put everything back?”
“We don’t have a warrant.”
“Scrap.”
They rewrapped the pipe and replaced it under the straw. Just as they were lifting the crate lid, a whistle blew.
They froze, staring across the lid at each other.
The whistle blew again, and someone started to shout. They set the lid on top of the crate. Taya eased the boxcar door shut as Cristof covered her with his needle gun. They crouched in the darkness, holding their breath.
The shouts didn’t sound alarmed, but there were a lot of them. Taya heard sliding doors being pulled open and boots striding across the wooden floor.
“Are they looking for us?” she whispered.
Cristof lowered the gun and pulled out his watch, angling it toward the lantern’s glimmer of light. “Quarter past four. Too early for morning shift.”
Men were approaching, their voices growing louder. Cristof hooded the lantern, plunging them into darkness. Taya backed up, trying not to stumble over anything. Her wings brushed against crates and the roof. She found a narrow gap between the crates and the metal side of the car and wedged herself in, every nerve on edge. Cristof slipped in next to her and touched her hand. She grasped it.
“It’s okay,” he whispered, his lips against her ear. “They can’t do anything to us.”
She squeezed his hand. Of course not. They might be held for questioning, but ultimately Amcathra was a lictor favored by the Council and Cristof was an exalted, with all the privileges of his birth. They’d be fine.
But getting caught would wreak havoc with their investigation. AME would have enough time to destroy the incriminating evidence and they’d lose their chance to arrest whoever was behind the illegal trade.
Workers passed by the car, their voices muffled.
As the minutes ticked by, the noise in the shed grow louder. More people were coming in, moving things, opening and closing doors. Then someone opened their boxcar door. Lantern light glowed against the sides of the crates. Taya shrank backward, holding her breath.
“There’s still room in here for a few more crates,” someone said.
“Headquarters says no mixing freight in the last two cars.”
“Headquarters is a pain in my ass,” the first person grumbled. The door slammed shut, plunging them back into the darkness. Something metallic rasped and clanked, rattled a few times, then thumped against the door.
Taya breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank the Lady!”
“Don’t thank Her too fast, love. They just locked us in.”
Her relief evaporated.
“Really?”
They sat, listening to the preparations outside.
“Should we pound on the door?” she ventured at last. Her husband sighed.
“We could, but… maybe this isn’t such a bad situation. If we stay here, we can keep searching the crates.”
“But we’ll be trapped all the way to Mareaux!” She felt a burst of panic. “That’s days away!”
“No, no, calm down.” Cristof reached out and took her hand again. “Janos knows where we are. As soon as he hikes back to Engels, he’ll send a message to have the train stopped. We won’t be in here for more than a few hours. We should be back in our own bed by nightfall.”
Taya took a steadying breath. Of course. Amcathra had her notes in his coat pocket; he knew exactly which train they were on and where it was going. And he wouldn’t rest until he knew Cristof was safe.
“I’m starting to hate trains,” she muttered, embarrassed.
“Will you be all right?” Cristof asked. “If you want, I’ll pound on the door and get us out right now. It doesn’t make any difference to me.”
“No, I’ll stay.” She steeled herself. Cristof might say he didn’t mind, but she knew he’d be disappointed if he couldn’t catch the traitor. “At least we’re out of the wind.”
* * *
She wasn’t certain how much time had passed before the cars began to move, but it felt like forever, sitting in the darkness trying to interpret the noises from outside. At last they heard the small steam engine that moved the cars back and forth from station to supply yard and felt a series of jolts. Taya was relieved to see dim light filter through the cracks between the boxcar door and its frame. At least when the lantern’s oil ran out, they wouldn’t be in the dark.
The trip along the spur didn’t last very long. They braced themselves as the car was transferred from one spur to another and put in line to hook up to one of the larger trains passing through Engels.
“Well, we might as well start searching,” Cristof said when everything grew still again. “It’ll be easier to open the crates while the car’s not moving.”
Enough light seeped through the cracks for them to see the breath in front of their faces and read the marks on the crates. They doused the lantern and picked up the crowbar.
The work went slowly. Each time they pulled out a new piece of equipment, Cristof sketched it on the back of one of his scientific journals, using the pencil Taya had taken from the AME office. Finally they opened the last crate. While Cristof puzzled over its contents, Taya pulled out her watch. Seven a.m. They’d been in the Engels station two hours. How long would it take for Amcathra to hike from the AME supply yard to town? He wasn’t the kind of man who’d let a sprained ankle slow him down if he needed to move quickly.
But that assumed he could get out of the yard immediately, she reminded herself. If he decided to remain hidden, it could take him a long time to slip out and back over the fence.
“Don’t worry,” Cristof said, glancing up at her.
“I’m not worried,” she said, tucking the watch back into her flight suit. It wasn’t quite a lie. She wasn’t worried; she just wanted to get out of the car. “But we have a problem.”
“Other than being locked inside a boxcar?”
“Well, it’s related. What do we do when we have to pee?”
He looked around at the walls, then down at the floor, with an expression of growing discomfort. “I wish you hadn’t asked that.”
“Sorry.”
“We could pile some packing straw in a corner. It’s dry and absorbent.”
“It’ll smell.”
“We’ll put it by the door so we can kick it through the cracks when we’re done. They’re wide enough for that. And once the train starts moving, I can widen them a little more with the crowbar.”
“This is the kind of situation that takes all the romance out of a marriage,” Taya observed.
“Is it an emergency?”
“Not yet.”
“Good.” He walked over to one of the crates and picked out a pipe. “Let’s see if I can devise something better, then.”
The car started moving about fifteen minutes later, jolting from track to track until Taya heard it being connected to cars in front and behind. Chains rattled and railroad workers shouted. By then Cristof had constructed a small, unwieldy funnel out of the pipes, tubes, and reservoirs he’d found in the crates, the pieces bound together with tightly knotted strips of oilcloth.
“The thin end goes through the crack between the door and the frame,” he said, handing it to her. “Be careful of overflow.”
Taya eyed it without enthusiasm. She supposed it was a step up from peeing on the floor, but only by the smallest of increments.
She set it down and started kicking straw next to the door.
“But—” her husband started to protest.
“In case of overflow,” she said, darkly. “Now do me a favor and go as far away as you can and turn your back.”
“Have I told you recently that I love you?”
“Go away, Cris.”
“I need to use it when
you’re done.”
* * *
Time passed. Taya pulled off her wings and set them floating in one corner, and Cristof worked on reconstructing the weapon on paper. She dozed fitfully. Each time she awoke, she checked her watch and then closed her eyes again. The boxcar had warmed up a little from the sun beating on its metal walls, although she still kept her gloves on as she napped.
By her husband’s calculations, they would reach Safira by one in the afternoon. Taya hoped so. They were nursing the canteen of water in Cristof’s backpack, neither of them keen to use the makeshift toilet-pipe a second time, so thirst gnawed at her throat. She was hungry, too. Her husband had crammed plenty of tools and scientific journals into his backpack, but nothing to eat.
“I think it’s some kind of steam-powered air gun,” Cristof declared at last.
“Like the lictors’ rifles?”
“Larger, but it would operate on the same general principle. A steam engine compresses the air instead of a manual pump, that’s all.”
“Those barrels looked huge.”
“I suppose it could be an air cannon. It would need to build up an immense amount of pressure to propel heavy shot any distance, though.”
“And why would anyone use steam instead of powder for a cannon?”
Cristof ran a hand through his long black hair, considering the question.
“Well, generating steam requires somewhat less effort than manufacturing gunpowder. And you could build a watertight steam generator, whereas water ruins gunpowder. And steam’s safer than powder around open flames. So steam might be the better choice in a wet climate, or when fire might be problematic.”
“Then why do we use gunpowder?”
“For one thing, powder weapons are more portable and easier to get ready. If you were trying to sneak up on an enemy, you wouldn’t want to have to power up a steam generator in order to use your weapons.”
“So they’d work best in a fortress,” Taya speculated.
“That would be a logical place for them,” Cristof agreed. “Or mounted on horse-drawn chasses or a train.”
Clockwork Lies: Iron Wind (Clockwork Heart trilogy) Page 23