by P. S. Power
She glanced at Beth and smiled a little.
"So, if we'd cheaped out, we'd be stuck sharing with Carter and Eugene?" She was being a little crude, but Beth let her head tilt to one side and then she sighed.
"If we were lucky it would be Sally and Clara. It isn't unheard of on a crowded train for such things to happen. These things are notorious for rapes and harassment of single women. Most won't use them if they have any choice at all. On this trip I imagine that everyone will have no more than a shared same sex room however. If Sally is bright she grabbed the key for the room she'd gotten for her services earlier, and certainly has enough to cover the cost of the trip. You rather overpaid, I think. Her eyes went so bright when you handed her ten mets that I thought she was going to lose herself in the moment." Beth didn't explain what she meant, but her voice was playful, which probably meant it was naughty.
Gwen didn't have the energy to work that out.
"I thought so. I wanted to give her enough money that she wouldn't stand on rules. That she did it went a long way to confirming that she was what she said. I should have insisted on watching, but..." She yawned. "I'm not a big enough perv for that, I guess. At least I got to insult Clara. I'm almost positive that if a pro said she did backdoor work back home it would have meant butt stuff." She grinned wickedly, and her friend cleared her throat, making her seem slightly stuffy.
"I'm nearly certain that it means the same thing here, and that she was merely embarrassed to have it bandied about in public. Hence me offering another thing for it to be. She took that rather easily, didn't she? It's not like I know what things like that mean."
"Oh." Gwen tried to care, but it wasn't happening at the moment. She pulled her pad out and made a notation of that by the woman's name. She just wrote "butt stuff". It was enough, she hoped.
Sam came back, and just handed over the keys, not lingering at all. He had change, which was a single note and a pile of coins, all decs. Dimes, basically. She pocketed them all, and as soon as she had her room key, laid down on the bottom bunk. Beth pointed at the door between rooms and opened it, but left it closed when she walked through.
It should have been hard for her to fall asleep, since everything in the room was wrong for it. There was too much light through the side window, she was moving, and the train, though quiet, moved side to side gently. For some reason that didn't matter at all. She drifted off so fast and hard that she didn't remember falling to sleep at all. Her eyes closed on their own, and then sometime later, she woke up in the dark. Alone. Her head felt better at least. She hadn't even worried about the monsters coming for her.
The trick now was that she needed to sleep as long as she could, so that she'd be able to be up when everyone else was later. In the moment however she needed to find a bathroom. They wouldn't have showers on the train, but they had toilets. If she had it right, that would be in the very last car. She worked her way back, going through the several sleeping cars, and then finally the sitting car, which only had one person in it. It was Clara, the bigot whore.
She was drifting off, her eyes opening when she saw who was there, a small sneer coming across her lips. She didn't speak however, looking away as if ashamed of being there at all. Gwen didn't care, needing to see to her bladder rather desperately.
"Restroom?" She asked this softly, since the night pretty much meant that she wanted to whisper the words for some unknown reason. It wasn't like there was anyone else to bother at the moment, was there?
"Back, three cars, it's in the last one." The answer came out sounding a lot more kind than her facial expression would have indicated. For a moment at least, she actually looked away awkwardly after that. Embarrassed again.
It was a hurried walk to the little line of rooms, and she did her business, and washed up a bit in the tiny sink with its little trickle of water that was the only thing like it they had on the train. There was a dining car too, where they could get food and water, but hungry or not, she and Beth hadn't gone to get anything, and it would have to wait for morning she bet. At least her hands were clean, after a bit of scrubbing.
When she went back, the slightly hard woman looked away, her face set, until she glanced at Gwen and actually blushed.
"I didn't bring a lot of funds for extra's. Sent most of mine in for the relief efforts last month." She might have been lying, but she was so embarrassed that she actually blushed. It was one of those times where she didn't know what the proper thing to do really was, given this place.
Thinking about it, she realized that she was probably supposed to ignore the woman, and act like she hadn't heard anything. That was what they did, when faced with someone on hard times. It probably went double for whores. That this place even had women that did that still amazed her really. It made sense, but no one had ever mentioned it before. Of course, if Gwen were faced with a stranger from another reality like her, she wouldn't have brought it up as a topic either, would she?
She looked at the side of the woman's face and then tilted her head.
"I have an extra bunk in my room. It's the top one, and you'll have a Westmorland in the space next to you, but it's yours if you want it? Everyone will think your working, most likely, but I don't care if you don't. I just mean that you can sleep there."
The professional women blinked at her, and seemed worried for a moment. That Gwen figured it would be about her not wanting to seem like they were doing something, apparently showed just how different her mind worked than some of the people here. After a bit she realized it was that polite thing they did instead.
"I... that's a most kind offer, ma'am. I wouldn't want to impose. Wouldn't your... Westmorland, object? I was a bit coarse with her earlier. What if she rifts in her sleep or something and I'm right there?"
She looked at the woman, and realized that her first impression, that the woman just wasn't all that bright, had really been true. It wasn't just ignorance, there was a tone to her words, a stumbling quality and slowness to what she was saying that implied that she just wasn't all that intelligent at all.
"Well, first, Bethany doesn't do that, so it isn't a problem. Most Westmorlands that go out in public can't. So if you ever meet one, they're safe. Second, if you were near one that did, you'd never even know it happened. If you have to die, that's the way to go. You do know that they didn't take out the Capital, right?" She'd said as much earlier, but the woman still looked doubtful.
"Who else could? You have to be one of them in order to do it. Least wise that's what I always heard."
"Sure, but only from people that have no more information about it than you do. If you want to really learn about Westmorlands, you should just ask them, personally. You have one right here on the train, and if you apologize for being mean to her, I bet she'd tell you whatever you wanted to know, except for how to rift or top secret things like that. But, you know, day to day things." She knew no such thing, but it got the woman to stand, looking only a little nervous. She pulled her two suitcases from the overhead bin, and started to struggle along with them. Gwen put her hand on one of them, and the woman stiffened, their fingers touching.
"It might be easier if I helped."
"Oh, right. I... thank you for the offer of the bed. I wasn't expecting kindness. Being what I am, I mean."
Gwen nodded once and then smiled, wondering what her face looked like. She probably still had sleep wrinkles on it. Creases from the flat pillow and all that.
She didn't speak about the idea, since really, she had no clue how looked down upon the woman would be. She assumed it was pretty low down the pecking order, but that was only a guess. For all she knew the woman was talking about her bigotry. That... Probably wasn't it though. Not as popular and open as people were about hating Westmorlands as they were here.
It took a bit for the woman to get situated, and they didn't have light in the room. Not even a glow lamp. That meant leaving the door open until the woman scrambled into place, and then shutting it, plunging the whole room into p
ure darkness. It sent a chill down her spine, and caused her to remember that tentacles might be reaching for her at any moment. Nothing happened, and she didn't let herself freak out. That fear was never simply too far from her mind anymore. On the good side, if there was one, it was no worse in the dark than the light. Not really.
She had trouble going back to sleep now, but only because Clara the bigot did it first and snored pretty loudly, considering she was a fairly trim looking woman. Average for this world, so slightly heavier than Gwen or Beth was. Not by a lot though. Back home the woman would have been below average weight even, by about thirty pounds or more. So she wasn't fat, just slightly plush for say, an actress or model. Maybe not for this world though. Gwen had a strong suspicion that she was actually considered a little too skinny for this place.
The rest of the night was a bit restless, though she dozed, and only worried about Clara killing her while she slept about six or seven times. The idea wasn't that farfetched, since they were there to hunt down a killer. Everyone had to be a suspect, didn't they? Even the slow seeming whore that rested above her, making all that racket.
When light finally worked through the window, she moved to the next chamber over, knowing that Beth might not be up yet. Super-soldier or not, the woman did not like to get up early at all. That was fine really, since no one else was up yet, but Gwen wanted to tell her about Clara being there first, instead of having her walk in and assume that Gwen was being experimental or something. Not that a Westmorland would have judged her for it if she had been, but the idea still left her feeling uneasy.
They hadn't gotten off on the right foot, exactly, had they?
Her friend was awake however, and had a little mirror out already, putting makeup on. Even in uniform they had to have some on, most of the time. It was a rule, and more than that, going without would make people think less of them. She could do her own, but didn't have a glass with her. She had brought her bags into the space however, not leaving them even for a moment.
After shutting the door, she waved back at it.
"I found Clara, our bigot friend, dozing off in the sitting car last night, so I let her use the top bunk. I told her to get her information about Westmorlands from the source, so she may, or may not, ask you some questions later. I kind of hope so. One less bigot in the world isn't a bad thing, right?" Digging through her pack she pulled out her little makeup bag. It was the bare minimum that she felt she could get away with for the trip. Some lip color, blush and smoothing compound, as well as a single eye liner. Nothing for her lashes, and only a brush and a hair tie for her hair.
Beth had at least three times as much with her, Gwen saw. It was spread out on the bunk next to her.
"Oh? That's generous of you. Most wouldn't invite a woman with her profession to do that. People will talk." She grinned though, rather than go into her stuffy social mode. She did that a lot in private. "Now, did you notice anything yesterday during our talks with the others?"
Gwen pulled her pad out and looked at her notes, getting that Beth had, and was going to tell her anyway, if she couldn't figure it out for herself.
"Um... Well, not really. I mean, we have two people that could have been in on the murders, but just being near them isn't the same as killing anyone. I suppose we could beat confessions out of them, but if they aren't guilty that won't stop the next round of things. Kind of hard on the knuckles too." Looking at her hands, she realized that she'd have to find a stick, or something heavy to do it with. Beating a person with a fist was a stupid thing to do, if you had another option. It hurt, and that made it harder to keep going.
Bethany was a detective by training, and, it turned out, had noticed a few things that Gwen had glossed over all together.
"Carter mentioned that he was alerted to the null magic effect before the first known murder took place. He has family in the area, so that explains being told about it, perhaps, but no other reports have reached us saying that such things were going on before the first event." Beth kept working on her face, as she spoke, looking only at the mirror, making deft and efficient hand gestures. "We also have not one, but two men that deal with strong magics on the train, having both been in place for each of the deaths. Carter hadn't mentioned being questioned like Mr. Hadley had."
Gwen blinked and then cleared a small patch on the heavy and slightly scratchy wool blanket that was on the bottom cot.
"I missed that. Is it that thing where some people get a pass on being questioned, do you think? Or, was he interviewed and just didn't mention it?"
"Not a clue, to tell the truth. Probably the first. A prominent researcher into radiatives would be given special treatment, in a case like this. No one would dare question such a person too closely, since odds are he's either already from a prominent family, or will have such rank soon, by his own efforts. Most can't afford University, so it would pay for Con-Sev or the local Constabulary to be cautious there."
When Beth finished, she reached for Gwen's makeup bag and patted her shoulder, getting her to turn to face her, so that she could do the work on her face too. It wasn't what they normally did, but it was a nice change. Gwen wasn't horrible with that kind of thing, but Beth was better at it. Faster too.
It meant not talking for nearly ten minutes, and when she did, the other woman shushed her, with a soft smile. She wasn't done yet, after all.
Finally, she got to speak freely.
"So, tell me again why we aren't just having you read their minds while being questioned? Is it because Carter might have had contact with Debussey or her crew at the school? That's why I didn't ask who he'd taken Traditional Magics from there, just in case that triggered him."
Beth shook her head.
"Good thinking, but no. We technically aren't allowed to do anything like that yet, not being at the crime scene. As it is we'll need to go carefully into this. People get uneasy when they think a Westmorland is going to be seeing their thoughts, and unless we have a decent level of evidence to back up our efforts in the first place, there might be trouble over the whole thing. We nearly have enough for Carter and Mr. Hadley, I think. Not for Samuel the porter however. Unless you have suspicions you haven't mentioned to me yet? After all, if you do, then I can simply act under your direction. That gets around a lot of problems pretty solidly."
She packed the makeup away, leaving Gwen with nothing to do really.
"Well, not honest ones. My take is that we should do it anyway, and only mention it if we find something, but I guess there are laws and things that I don't know about... Don't tell me what they are though, so that when I break them later, I can claim ignorance. For now, I guess we need to just ask questions. Do you think we should try and get something to eat? I haven't had much for a while now." Her stomach didn't growl, but Beth's did, at the mere mention of food.
"Are you buying? Normally I'd suggest we wait until we get in to the next station, but we've been on the same schedule." It was one of those things that Beth normally didn't mention, but Gwen had a lot more money than she did. A whole lot more.
"Naturally. We should pick up everyone else too I guess, and treat them to a meal. If it's going to be that expensive. I want them thinking that they're all free and clear of this, instead of our suspects. So try not to glare at them so much this time. Make it seem like we were just being tired and grumpy yesterday."
"We weren't?"
Gwen cleared her throat and then let her eyes cross, making a funny face.
"Well, I was, but you seemed like a hardened Westmorland, ready to kick everyone's butts if they didn't toe the line."
"Why would I do any of that?"
Gwen knew that it was a language problem, and not that Beth hadn't been being strict and a bit glaring on purpose. She just didn't get the references. For once Gwen just didn't bother to explain. It wouldn't hurt for others to learn a little about her way of speaking, after all.
"Why? Because you're a hard, hard woman, Bethany Westmorland. Right now we need you to be
friendly, and at least seem soft. Let's see if we can get people around? It's still pretty early."
That didn't seem to be too hard of a problem, since most people hadn't needed to sleep for nearly twelve hours like she had, and didn't want to on their hard cots with their scratchy and questionable blankets any longer than nature required them to. She was probably going to end up with pubic lice or something, from the one that she'd been on the night before. Just thinking about it made her scalp crawl and itch. She badly wanted a real bath or shower. Even one of the shockingly high powered things they used here, if that was all she could get.
Covertly she scratched at the back of her head, but Bethany didn't, just making certain everything was packed up.
"We have these rooms for the whole trip, but you mentioned keeping our things with us the whole time?" Beth didn't sound like she was disapproving, but looked at Gwen's bags, which she'd carried just to go to the next room. She hadn't taken them to the bathroom the night before however, leaving them locked inside her space. That was probably a bad idea, because in a set up like this, half a dozen people might well have keys to it.
She was going to have to do a lot better.
"Yeah."
Bethany managed to get everyone around fairly simply, by stepping out into the hallway and walking toward the front of the car, poking her head into the next one and calling out softly. Gwen didn't hear the words, but not ten seconds later there was a man dressed like a porter there. One that she didn't recognize at all. He was white, and older, but still had a fit look to him, like Sam did.
Too muscular for men that just handled bags every now and then. Like athletes, or fighters. Ex-military, probably, she guessed. Ones that worked hard to stay in shape?
Her friend explained things to the man quickly, which got his eyes to go a little wide.
"Breakfast is being provided by the Kingdom. Would you ask everyone to join us?" It was a good thought, since that way no one would worry about who was paying for things. Gwen could just pass one of the workers the cash, and it would be all set. Men here could be a little picky about letting women pay for them, but if Ferdinand was doing it, then there was no problem, right? Even if he didn't know about it. The King probably didn't know about most of what was done in his name, she bet.