by Faith Hunter
Taft was police. Taft was undercover. Sweet seraph. I was I trouble.
I swept the horror off my face and tried to restore the adoring expression I’d been wearing only moments before.
Koren was on the floor of the cabin amidst the bodies of the men in black, holding her arm, making a piteous mewling sound.
“Koren Steinwald,” Taft said, his voice officious, “You are under arrest for the murder of Harold Meechum, and for attempted train robbery. You and your men will be kept in the mail car under the watchful eye of my partner, and remanded over to the proper authorities at our next stop. May the High Host have mercy on your soul, for the court system will not.”
Turning back to me, he continued in his normal voice, “I’ve got it all under control. You’re safe now. Go back into your room, little miss. I’ll bring you breakfast soon.”
I backed away and closed the door. Leaned against it. Tried to remember how to breathe.
Behind me, I could hear Koren curse as Taft handcuffed the prisoners, and then dragged them down the corridor to the next train car. The doors closed.
A Hand of the Law would arrest me. Torture me. Turn me over to the kirk. I was an unlicensed neomage who had just released a conjure in his presence. But maybe he hadn’t noticed. Misfire, he’d said. Was I safe? I must be safe. He hadn’t arrested me and dragged me away with Koren.
I fell on the bed and pulled the covers over me, shaking with cold and shock.
It took quite a while to get the train back up and running. And then more time at the next stop. It would put us a day late getting to Mineral City, but I didn’t care how long the trip was. I would be spending the rest of the trip locked safe in my room, having my meals left on the other side of the door.
The days dragged on. I practiced with my amulets. Studied the Book of Workings. Got bored again and read one of the Pre-Ap books. It was about a place where dragons and humans were friends and worked together to try to save their world. A world where people could ride dragons to fight a menace in the sky. It sounded amazing and made me want to soar on a dragon. But no way were the dragons in my world going to work with anyone. No way were they going to allow a human to ride them. Humans and their souls were tasty treats to dragons in my world.
Four days passed. We were a little over thirty-six hours late so far, making the trip far longer than Lolo had expected. Four days as my opal Glamour amulet faded and died several times and had to be recharged from my prime. And then my prime began to fade. It needed to be attuned to my energies. It needed to be recharged. And for that all I needed was a long train stop at a depot near rock. Lots of rock.
We had been climbing into the Appalachians for days now, our forward progress hampered by the meandering route necessary for a train to rise in altitude. And the Appalachians were stone.
Most of our stops to take on water and supplies were near towns, and towns were usually built on at least marginally farmable land, the soil of centuries overlaid on the bedrock. The train sometimes stood still for an hour or more, and passengers would leave to shop in the stores near the depot. But even with the town built on soil, there would have to be exposed rock somewhere—the dirt could be thin in the mountains. Given time and rock, I’d be fine. I just needed to know when the next appropriate stop would be.
Summoning my courage, I dressed in long sleeves and thin gloves to cover my softly glimmering limbs, a kerchief over my hair. Lolo had packed human makeup, and I used some of that, inexpertly, on my face. I was surprised that Lolo even thought of makeup.
When Taft knocked on my door to deliver breakfast, I opened it wide and backed away.
“Are you okay, little miss?” he asked. “I know the robbery attempt was a terrifying thing for you. I promise you’re safe now.”
“Thank you. I do feel better. But I need to get out a bit. I want to buy a present for my adoptive father. Do we have a long stop soon?”
“We’ll be pulling through Hendersonville at 10 a.m. and our layover there is close to four hours. We’ll be shuffling the deck.” At my blank look he said, “The cars have to be uncoupled and recoupled to a different kind of engine, one that’s equipped with the proper devices to melt snow and ice as we climb the last leg. You can shop, eat a meal, even take a tour of the old ruins, if you want.”
Hendersonville had been badly damaged in the Last War, and a tour might give me a chance to get close to stone. “I’d like that,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Any time, little miss.” He backed away and closed my door. I had to wonder why Taft was still on the train; he had foiled the robbery. But maybe train marshals lived on trains.
Promptly at ten, I was standing at the vestibule at the end of the car, holding a large bag and dressed in heavy layers, a knitted hat, and thick gloves for the weather, which had gone from cold to glacial with the elevation change. My makeup-covered face was the only skin showing.
The moment the train stopped, I scrambled down onto the platform. Rushing into town, I found a shop, where I bought a candle, a pair of knife-pointed hair-cutting scissors, and a box of salt that had a healthy mine-salt glow. Then I found a rickshaw with a runner who was willing to take me to the ruins. He was a strange little creature, not much taller than I and stick-thin, with an accent I couldn’t place.
As he trotted away from the town, I lied, “My great-great-grandparents’ home is supposed to be over that way,” I pointed in a random direction. “It’s a brick house that was destroyed by a stone spear in a battle with Darkness. According to my grandmother, it’s a little off the beaten path. Do you know any houses with stone like that?”
“Aralbet knows everything about these ruins, missy ma’am. Everything. I know of five such destroyed houses, but only one with a spear of stone through its heart. I can take you to it, lady.”
We passed numerous boulders and rocky outcrops, but they’d all lain exposed to the elemental damage of ice, snow, and air—useless to me. But in less than an hour Aralbet had delivered me to what I wanted. The remains of a brick house were scattered around a single shaft of mountain heart stone. Luckily, the stone didn’t glow with the remembered taint of Darkness and it had been partially protected from rain by the house’s metal roof that was still partly in place. “This is it.”
Aralbet stopped the rickshaw and I slid to the ground. “I’m going to walk around it, okay? And stop to pray. My grandmother lost her entire family here and I promised I’d light a candle and pray for them.”
“Not until Aralbet sees if it’s safe, missy ma’am.” He pulled a short spike from the floor of the rickshaw beneath my feet. It was a flame-blackened and hardened stick with a makeshift iron point affixed to one end. He jogged around the house, stopping every now and then to poke the spike into holes. He wasn’t very bright, but he had been working for tips for a long time, and he knew how to look important. He was also awfully sweet. Missy ma’am? Odd. “Okay, missy ma’am. You’re safe to say your prayers. I’ll stand here and guard you and wait.”
“Thank you, Aralbet,” I said, gravely. Satisfied that I might get away with my less-than-half-baked-plan, I walked around the house, and chose a spot where brick and stone met and Aralbet wouldn’t be able to see me. I’d forgotten to bring a blanket, so I emptied my bag and sat on it. With the last sparks of the handy-dandy cooking charm, I lit the candle and set it as close to the north as I could figure. I poured a narrow salt ring around me. And I stabbed my left thumb with the scissors.
“Fire and feathers,” I cursed and lowered my voice, “that hurt!” I smeared the welling blood on my nearly dead prime amulet, and then on the roof-shielded side of the upthrust stone. I leaned into the rock, head bowed as if I was praying. “Stone and fire, water and air, blood and kin prevail,” I whispered. “Wings and shield, dagger and sword, blood and kin prevail.” Beneath my fingers the prime hummed, the vibration high-pitched and fast. And it . . . sucked up my blood, pulling it into itself. Even the blood still dripping from my wound hovered in midair and then slap
ped wetly onto the amulet.
Light glowed. Energy, raw and intense, flooded from the stone spear into my prime amulet. Energy flowed from my prime to me, and back to the prime. The microstructures in the amulet shifted, realigned, reformed themselves. And all of a sudden I felt . . . whole.
The white onyx Arctic seal amulet that had been sitting dormant in my shirt pocket for the entire trip began to glow through the cloth. With mage sight I could see energy flowing into the seal from somewhere else, much more energy than even the stone spear had given me, energy waiting for me to tap it. Lolo had given me a lifeline: a preprogrammed link to an alternate CE source!
I wasn’t sure exactly what I was doing, but with my prime amulet properly attuned I didn’t have to know. I could just let creation energy flow from the Link amulet to my prime, and then into each of the pre-conjured charms. Relief left me breathless. My skin stopped glowing. My throat, which had been sore because my prime wasn’t protecting me from elemental allergens, stopped hurting.
I sat back. I wasn’t tired anymore, but I was hungry. Starving. I wanted peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Muffins. Even tofu would be good about now.
I stood and scuffed the salt into the grass, knowing this much salt would kill even weeds, and feeling sorry for that. My Earth mage twin would have been furious. Rose. Gone. Alone. I forced tears away, snuffed the candle, and repacked the bag. I was alone. But I was surviving. That’s what mattered.
Feeling better than I had since I left Enclave, I climbed back into the rickshaw and asked Aralbet to return me to the train depot.
I went to bed that night and slept well, knowing I could keep my secrets as long as I wasn’t searched.
On the next day I sat in the dining car with the other passengers. I read the dragon book again and enjoyed it just as much the second time. And I went to sleep knowing that it would be my last night on the train.
As my thoughts drifted toward slumber, I felt warmth against my skin coming from the amulets I’d placed under my pillow in the bed with me. The wooden charm that I hadn’t been able to identify was hot. It was activated now and I could feel a spell of forgetting. Lolo. What had Lolo wanted me to forget? Seraph bones!
Sleep took me.
When I woke, it was in an odd little bed that was rocking beneath me. The flannel sheets were rough compared to the mage-touched sheets I slept under in the priestess’s house. The clothes I was wearing were cotton, my socks knitted wool. Human-made clothes.
Memory returned, of my gift descending. Of the bitter tea Lolo had forced down my throat. I had been smuggled out of Enclave and put on a train. And—where was I?
Around my neck was a leather thong, the opal disc pendant lying on my chest. My mage attributes didn’t glow and I intuited a connection to the opal: I assumed it blanked them, making me look human, dull and ugly, keeping my secret from the human world.
There were hand rails on the side of the bed. I levered myself over them and down to the floor to find myself in a private cabin of a sleeper car on a train outside of Enclave. Alone.
But, oddly, it didn’t seem as terrifying as I might have expected it to be.
I dressed in the unfamiliar clothing and then looked to see what Lolo had sent along with me. Not much.
There was a knock at the cabin door and a branded man with mismatched eyes asked what I wanted for breakfast. When he returned with my meal, he told me to pack and be ready to leave. “We’ll be at Mineral City at the 3 p.m. stop. I’ll be bringing the rest of your luggage here shortly.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll be ready.” And I tipped him well. He looked as if life might be hard for him.
At 3:10 the train stopped, though I could still feel it moving in my muscles and nerves. I was sitting on my luggage. The porter knocked on my door and when I opened it, he said, “Little Miss, this is your stop.”
Little Miss because I was only four feet tall and skinny. The porter thought I was a pre-teen human traveling to family. Rich family, hence the private compartment in the sleeper car.
He stacked my stuff on a cart and I followed him down the narrow corridor, through the crush of people, my eyes on his mop of hair high above everyone else. The porter was tall, which was handy.
Outside, the smells hit me: ice and water and snow and the smoke of wood fires. The scent of stone, which was amazing. There was no natural stone in Enclave—New Orleans was built on centuries of accumulated river silt. The only rock was carried in by traders for use by Stone mages like me. But here, the very ground oozed stone power!
“This way, Little Miss. Your grandmother said the man meeting you would be in the station and that I was to see you personally into his hands.” I followed, feeling a hint of excitement. “Lemuel Hastings,” the porter called out, his voice nearly as penetrating as a conductor’s. “Lemuel Hastings! Got a passenger for you!”
“Thorn St. Croix?” a gravelly voice demanded. I turned, the anticipation quivering in my chest. He was a grizzled old human, maybe forty-five or even fifty years old, though I had little familiarity with old humans. The humans in Enclave all looked young, healthy, strong. This one was red-faced, his skin lined and browned, his head covered by a hat, his lanky body mostly hidden by layers. His eyes, brown as swamp water, landed on me. “A girl? What in saints’ balls good is a girl?”
I felt as if I’d been hit with a mallet. All the air left my lungs. My excitement evaporated.
Hastings turned to the porter. “It was supposed to be a boy! Someone I could train up for my business, who’d get strong when I got old. Someone to take care of me.” He leaned in, examining me, and the scent of the old man hit me. Pipe smoke and aftershave, something Lolo might mix, with sandalwood and sweet orange. And the scent of stone dust. I surprised myself by picking out the smell of raw hematite. There was reddish dust ground into his clothes.
The porter said, “Sir, I—”
I interrupted. “You’ve been working old bloodstone. You mine it yourself?”
Hastings stepped back. “What do you know about old bloodstone?”
“Not heliotrope. Reddish bloodstone. Hematite. Full of iron. It can be used in cosmetics and industry and traded to mages in the Enclaves.”
“How would I mine it?” he barked.
“Very carefully,” I said, smirking.
“How old are you?”
“Fourteen,” I said.
The porter’s mismatched eyes widened as he took in my small size.
“I haven’t hit my growth spurt yet,” I lied. I’d hit one. There might be another. Or not. Neomages are much smaller in stature than humans.
Hastings grunted, and dug in his pocket, pulling out a stone. “What’s this?”
“Heliotrope,” I said instantly. “What a rock-hound would call bloodstone in these days.”
“And this?” He handed me another rock, coarse to the touch, vaguely pyramidal in shape. There was a crystal buried in the rough, but not enough of it exposed to tell for certain by color alone. The rough was grayish, with maybe a hint of faintest lavender.
I rubbed my thumb over the sliver of exposed crystal. The gem hummed at me, rich and nigh unto perfect. I squinted up at him. “You sure you want me to say this out loud? In public?” I left the last of the phrase silent. Where someone might steal your find and jump your claim.
The man snatched the rock from my hand and the cart handle from the porter’s. He glared at the porter. “I’ll take her. You tell the old witch we’re even now.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but when Hastings whirled and left the station, I followed, until the porter put a restraining hand on my shoulder. “I’m through here every month. He mistreats you or . . .” He stopped and rubbed his chin. “He mistreats you in any way, you meet me here next month, same date, same time. I’ll take you back to New Orleans.”
That was odd, for a human to feel such interest in—maybe compassion for—a person he’d just met. “Thank you.” I took his hand and shook it. “You’re a good
hu—person.”
Before he could figure out that I’d nearly called him a human, I spun and followed Lemuel Hastings out the door and into the frigid air of Mineral City.
Mettilwynd
95-103 PA / 2107-2115 AD
Tamsin L. Silver
September 9, 95 Post-Ap / 2107 AD – Mumbai, India
Rocking slowly with the sway of the pirate ship, silent tears slid down Chopra’s face as she closed the lifeless eyes of the girl whose head lay cradled in her lap. “Shaanti dhoondhen, my friend. I’m so sorry.”
Chopra ran a hand over her own half-inch of recently shaved, dark brown hair, and looked up at her best friend, Miku; the Asian girl had been stripped to her undergarments, hands bound together with rope above her head, then attached to a hook in the ceiling.
“Is she . . .” Miku asked, hesitant to finish her sentence.
Chopra nodded. “Delphine is gone.”
“Nooo . . .” Miku moaned, tears streaming down her face.
“What a waste,” grumbled the large man Chopra’d heard referred to as Val. He stopped behind her, smelling of whiskey and pungent body odor. “She was the prettiest, too. Throw the blonde one overboard and weigh anchor. Jetrel is expecting our special cargo.” Grabbing Chopra’s arms from behind, Val hauled the Indi-girl to her feet and held her while another crewman took her friend’s lifeless body away, her blonde hair hanging, her limbs limp.
“No!” Chopra screamed, trying to pull free of Val’s big, rough hands as the double, complicated locks were undone on the only way in or out of the hold.