Book Fifteen

Murder Under Violet Skies

“The fires of industry burn cold on Valos. Thousands of years ago, Calis arrived in the skies above her, smashing one of her moons asunder and spilling the molten madness of the Reach upon her surface. The fragments of that catastrophe–pieces of Calis and Blackfang both–showered Valos in the mana-warped ice of space. Buried over the millennia, in the last few hundred years the potency of those ice crystals began to come to light, and the rush to dig them up fuelled exploration and wars across the Songs. The way they absorb and store energy makes them perfect for turning wheels and cogs and, while their outputs vary from crystal to crystal, the largest and most potent have been used to create some wondrous machines.”

“Fascinating,” Ravi Matrya says, watching the blue crystal turning in its cradle. Iron spikes emerge from four of its facets and attach to a toothed ring around it, which turns a pair of cogs on either side. The machinery expands out from there, losing Ravi in its complexity.

“It’s from one of my father’s books,” Glitter says, his voice going a little higher as he finishes his perfect quote. “He had a lot about crystals. They were his work, until he found me.”

“Is everything alright?” says a frightfully skinny man in a dark blue uniform that doesn’t fit him. His hat declares him the conductor of the train, but the way he wrings his hands and fusses with his grey moustaches suggest he isn’t confident in it. Unlikely though it seems, his name is Matteus Flamesbane. “Only the sergeant said you knew a thing or two about machines, and we’re not starting properly. We’ve had to use the steam engine to get going the last few stops, and our engineer got drunk and fell off the back of the train in Frosthold so we’re in a bit of a muddle. The Sultan of the Rails won’t be happy if we get back to Ragg…” he casts his eyes in either direction and lowers his voice, “late.” It comes out as a hiss.

“Umm…” Glitter says. His light pulses into the internals of the engine, ricocheting through gears and axles. The rhythmic clank and shudder of the train settles over the cab and lingers. “Oh,” Glitter says. “I’m afraid everything isn’t alright. The workings are so worn out!”

Matteus winces. “Can you… can you do anything?”

“I think so!” Glitter says, voice chipper. “I used to build rockets all the time.”

“They didn’t work, though,” Ravi points out.

Glitter draws himself a hurt expression. “I had limited resources.”

Matteus takes off his hat and wipes his brow, a smile lifting his moustache. “I’m not rightly sure what a rocket is, but if you can help, I’d greatly appreciate it. Usually the World Force are a lot less approachable.”

“Oh, we’re not really World Force,” Ravi says. “We’re just assisting the sergeant.”

“Nevertheless, I thank you.”

“I can’t work on it while we’re moving, though,” Glitter says. “How long until we reach Horologium?”

“It’ll be tomorrow morning, I’m afraid. Still, no more stops now between here and the capital. Just wind and sand.”

“That’s okay,” Glitter says. “I can map out the structure of the engine and make a list of things I need. Does the engineer have a store on board I can look through?”

“Oh of course,” Matteus says, gesturing back down the train. “It’s in the boiler room.”

Ravi leaves Glitter to his work and wanders back through the burning heart of the train to the coal car. A ladder takes him to the gangway that traverses the massive bucket of fuel, but he stops halfway across to stare out over the desert. The wind flings sand at him while the sun beams down through the Resplendence, fracturing the sky and enveloping the barren land in soft purple. He grips the rail and feels the bounce of the train, listens to the hiss of smoke and steam and the clicker-clack of the rails gliding by beneath them.

“You really like trains, huh?” Vale says. “Weird.”

“I do,” Ravi says. “I didn’t know that I would. Not for sure. But it was a dream I shared with my sister. We wanted to ride a train together.”

“Where is she?”

“She died,” Ravi says. “A long time ago.”

“Oh. How?”

“She was taken by an evil spirit.” Ravi finds he is gripping the rail a little harder. “I couldn’t save her.”

“Pretty cool way to go,” Vale says, then meets Ravi’s incredulous look. “What?”

“You really don’t see it?”

“Oh. Was that insensitive?”

“Yes!”

“Right. Sorry.” With an effort, she makes her hands ‘real’ enough to lean against the rail next to Ravi. She is getting better at that, but she still passes through things at least half the time. “Geez, there is so much to remember about talking to people.”

“Most people don’t have to remember that other people have feelings, Vale.”

“I’m not most people, remember?” She sighs, though the air does not stir. “I’m sorry, about your sister.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ravi says, looking back to the desert and letting the rumbling anger drift away with the sands. “It’s a shame Glitter’s so scared of you. I think he’d find it encouraging to know there are people worse at socialising than him.”

“Now who’s being insensitive?” Vale says with a smirk. “‘You’re worse at being human than a sentient crystal from space’ is hardly a compliment.”

“Sorry. But I meant that you might be able to help each other.”

“I told you not to try and change me, Master,” Vale says, losing her smile.

“I’m not. I’m just making a suggestion. Just because you’re my…”

“Tool.”

Ravi winces. “Doesn’t mean you aren’t still your own person. I won’t try to force you to change, but I’m also not going to deny you chances to change yourself.”

Vale turns away, then shrugs uncomfortably.

“Everybody changes, Vale. In small ways and large. It’s part of living. I’m not saying you need to, but I’m a very different person from when I started this journey. From the boy who talked excitedly about trains with his sister. I’d be surprised if you’re the same person you were the day you died.”

“Not much changes with me,” Vale says. “The world still looks the same as it did yesterday.”

“Well. Can you at least stop calling me ‘master’? People might get the wrong impression.”

“Of course, Master,” Vale says with a smirk.

Ravi just rolls his eyes.

The sun is setting, and with its surrender comes the blessed release of night. Raith Ixel watches with her hand shading her eyes as its light sneaks beneath the Resplendence to paint the sand orange. The bumps in the track set her body swaying and she feels too drained to fight it, so she wavers in her seat as though she is at sea. There is a glass of water on the table in front of her, but the three she has already consumed have not defeated her nausea, and the waft of alcohol and peals of laughter that roll through the carriage are so potent that she can barely smell the other passengers’ blood.

At least the company is good. Rolleck the Lost is a man who knows how to create a comfortable silence. He holds a book propped against his sword and uses his other hand to sip from his glass of whisky. He occasionally strokes his moustache in thought, then turns the page. Their table feels like an oasis of calm and decent rail travel. Few other tables can boast such, as the majority of their occupants are listening to Riyo Falsemoon, who is standing on the bar.

“You can never find what you need at the bazaar, can you? It’s bizarre.”

“Boo!” one of the passengers yells, while the others laugh.

“Boo? What are you, a ghost? I met a ghost, once, you know. He tried to sell me a fake mana gem, but I saw right through him.”

Raith sees Rolleck wince.

“Honestly, though. Ghosts are no joke. Toughest gig I ever did was to a bunch of ghosts. I died on my arse, but they expected me to keep going. That’s the undead for you, eh?”

That one got a pretty small chuckle, so Riyo mentally crossed it from her list.

“Hey, what do you call a waterproof ghost? A caghoul!”

She takes a swig of her beer, hoping it will encourage the audience to remember their own drinks. They seem to laugh more the more they drink.

The train stretches out through the sunset like a snake, capturing the last of the warmth before its blood cools. Sleeper cars pad out the bulk of its length, some passengers already retiring into the quiet lull after dinner. The last few cars bulge with cargo and luggage, rickety crates sharing space with thrice locked chests, all casting shadows into the corners that grow deeper as the light fades.

At the caboose is a carriage left completely empty: no seats, no passengers, no freight. Just bare wooden floor and the sound of the train. Emerald leans against a rail outside this car, watching the tracks flee beneath her, only to be replaced by more. Next to her sits a little girl with eyes the size of the train’s wheels. She has followed Emerald out here and has neither looked away nor blinked in the last half an hour. Emerald has been ignoring her, but this is not the comfortable solitude she had been hoping for when she came back here.

“Are you a dragon?” she says.

Emerald stares down at her and she shuffles back, clinging to the opposite railing but still staring, mouth agape.

“That took you half an hour to come up with?”

“Are you?”

“Yes.” Emerald turns back to the empty desert.

“Wow.”

Some more time passes, and Emerald considers giving up on solitude and returning to the sidelong fears of the other passengers.

“My daddy said he met a dragon before, but mummy said they’re not real.”

“I’m real,” Emerald says. “But your daddy’s dragon might not be. Lots of people lie about dragons.”

“Why?”

“Because dragons are strong. Fearsome. People claim they have survived, or even bested us, because they think it will make them appear strong.”

“My daddy says he beat a dragon.”

“You see-”

“At cards.”

Emerald glances back at the girl. “That’s a new one. Dragons aren’t known for being good card players.”

“He says the dragon was really bad at cards. He won a shiny scale and he gave it to me ‘cause he said it would protect me but mummy told him to stop making things up so I,” she stops to take a quick breath, “wanted to ask you if it was real which is why I followed you but then it was hard ‘cause…” She realises she has spilled everything, and her voice goes quiet again. Her big eyes seem to shimmer. “’cause you look strong. An’ fearsome.”

Emerald bursts out laughing, making the girl jump back. She folds her wings in close so that she can sit down cross-legged in front of the child, still chuckling.

“Thank you,” she says. “I needed that.” She holds out her hand. “What is your name?”

“Guinevere. Guinevere Copperwright.”

“My name is Emerald. Show me your charm, Guinevere Copperwright, and I can tell you if it is truly a dragonscale.”

The little girl smiles like the midday sun and plucks something sparkly from somewhere in her fancy dress. She lays it reverentially in Emerald’s palm.

It is golden.

Emerald blinks, her heartbeat rising. It is probably a fake, made to look convincing to human eyes, and yet… the weight of it… She taps it against the palm of her other hand. It doesn’t feel like gold. She gradually increases the pressure of her claw, waiting for the metal to bend, but it resists.

“Is it…?” Guinevere says.

“There is one last test,” Emerald says, standing and turning her back on the train. She finds her hand is shaking. “If it can withstand my flame, then it is a true scale. If it is a fake, it will melt away.”

“Oh.” Guinevere glances back at the door. “Only my daddy gave it to me… It… It might protect me even if it is fake, since it’s got his love in it. Right?”

Emerald’s excitement fades, and she smiles. “Of course.” She offers the scale back to Guinevere, who reaches out, then stops and shakes her head.

“Daddy wouldn’t lie to me.”

“If you’re sure,” Emerald says. “And you’re not just saying that because you want to see me breathe fire.”

“No!” Guinevere stamps her foot. “I believe my daddy.”

“I think I believe him, too.” Emerald stretches out her arm and breathes a current of pink flame across her palm. She is capable of burning through dragonscale with her cowl alight, but the soft, dancing light that rolls out into the desert dusk is just enough to melt anything that might seek to imitate.

The light fades, and the twilight swoops back darker than it was before. Emerald lowers her hand so they girl can see and shares her grin over the shining scale.

“A true, golden dragonscale.”

“Oh thank you!” Guinevere jumps up to hug Emerald around the neck. “Ouch! Your scales are hard.”

“Hard enough to withstand almost anything,” Emerald says as the girl lets go. “But.” She sits down again and holds the scale up, pinched between her foreclaws. “A dragon’s claws can pierce another’s scales.” She squeezes, carefully increasing the pressure until she feels the very point of her claw pierce the scale.

“Wah!” Guinevere jumps up to grab it off her, but Emerald raises her other hand to halt her.

“It’s just a small hole,” she says, demonstrating. “But with a little help…” She plucks a seed from her pouch and holds it on her palm next to the scale, whispering it to wakefulness. Tendrils of Spring’s life break from the seed and twist through the hole in the scale, then droop from Emerald’s palm like falling ivy. The two ends clasp together in a simple twist, then the plant grows darker, until it’s green is almost train track grey, its leaves flush black with the oncoming night.

“Wirevine,” Emerald says. “Stronger than the ropes that hold a galleon’s sails against the wind.” She shows Guinevere the way the ends twist and untwist, then puts it around the girl’s neck.

She stares down at it with unabashed awe.

“So now you’re protected threefold: a dragon’s might, a dryad’s magic, and a father’s love.”

“You’re the best, Emerald!” Guinevere shrieks, hugging her again.

“And now,” Emerald says. “I was hoping you could introduce me to your father. Humans have tales of dragons, but we dragons have tales of our own, and a golden scale is a rare thing indeed. I’d like to ask him about it.”

“Okay! I can’t wait to show him my necklace!”

The stomp of boots precedes the rattle of chains in a slow, steady rhythm that mocks the rush of the train. The groaning heat of the boiler room hisses steam through rattling turbines, hiding the soft sound of well-oiled leather and the creaking sway of a heavy scabbard. The door opens and closes, and the man leaning on his coal shovel breathes a sigh of relief before checking his pocket watch.

“Later than I thought,” he mumbles.

“Time to switch.” The voice caresses his ear, making him jump and shiver.

“Right,” he says, wiping sweat from his brow. “Right.”

“Umm… The leftmost bracket has worn down too,” Glitter says. “But it will hold out until the train gets back to Ragg.”

“I see, I see,” Matteus says, scribbling in a notepad. “That’s quite a list. I’m not sure how much of it we can actually get at the Horologium station, but I’m sure operations will see the necessity of at least some of it.”

The door of the cab opens, letting some of the new-born night in.

“The hour is at hand,” a deep, careful voice says. “Timing is everything. You know that, conductor.”

Glitter turns his attention to regard the huge man who has joined them. He has had to lean down to get through the door, and his head almost brushes the ceiling. He wears a cap similar to Matteus’, but there is a silver crescent moon on its badge. A set of chains is wrapped around his waist and a thick-bladed sword hangs from them. His strength is palpable and uncomfortable, and his stubbled face is mean despite his measured words.

“Oh,” Matteus says, a tremor in his voice. “We were just discussing repairs…”

“Repairs?” the heavy-set man says, turning to Glitter and appraising him with serene charcoal eyes. “We are already delayed, conductor.”

“T-to be carried out during our stop in Horologium,” Matteus squeaks.

“The engineer is gone. He disembarked at Westunnel. There can be no repairs.”

“He… disembarked? I thought you said he got drunk and fell off…”

“That’s right.” The man’s tone remains the same. “He fell.”

“Uh. Yes. Well. A World Force officer stopped us to request transport and-”

“We are even further behind schedule?”

“I’m afraid so.” Matteus tries to loosen his collar, although it is already more than an inch too big for him. “Only a matter of a few minutes…”

The man takes a step forward, and for a moment Glitter feels a sickly menace crawling inside his chassis. Then it is gone.

“Night has fallen, conductor.”

“Yes. Yes. Of course. Come, Glitter. Let’s let the night warden do his job.” He pats Glitter on the side and makes for the door. Glitter hesitates a moment, then follows. He remains aware of the large man’s perfect stillness until he is outside the door and his sense of the cab becomes fuzzy.

Matteus lets out a shaky breath. “Garth. The night warden. He and his… team… look over the train during the night. He can be a little… stern.”

“He’s scary,” Glitter says.

“He’s right, though. The Sultan hates a late train. He will already know of our delays so far. If we don’t make it up somehow… Well. Even Garth wouldn’t want to cross the Sultan of the Rails.”

“I thought conducting a train would be a fun job,” Glitter says.

“Oh, it is. I’m not too worried. There’s a lot of track between here and Ragg. Cut a few stops short here, push the train a little harder there… A lot of ways to make up lost time. We just have to hope there are no further problems.”

“Uh oh.” Glitter draws on his squiggly worried mouth. “That sounds like something Riyo would say right before-”

A scream echoes out over the clatter of the train.

Riyo is aware her ad-lib set is not going too well, but she didn’t think it warranted that. Everybody has turned to look at the back of the carriage where the door bursts open to reveal a distraught woman.

“Somebody help me! A doctor. Please! It’s my husband!”

People crowd between the tables, trying to get a look at who is shouting and why. The hubbub quickly overtakes the urgency as people ask loud questions and start trying to find out if their travel companions have any medical training.

Riyo takes a moment to realise that she does not have a healer on her own team yet, and then decides to use her tenuous power over the crowd as their sort-of entertainment to bring order to the rising chaos.

“Shut up!” she yells over their heads, waving her arms to draw their attention back to the bar. “Sit down!”

A surprising number of people obey, and those not inclined to find themselves singled out as parts of the problem rather than the solution and hasten their embarrassed returns to their places.

“I am a doctor,” a short, round man close to the bar says into the new quiet. He is wearing round spectacles close to the tip of his nose, and the rose of his cheeks suggests he has had a whiskey or two to help him survive Riyo’s comedy. Nevertheless, his silvery moustache and balding pate speak to his experience, and nobody with a lower blood-alcohol content steps forward to supersede his claim.

He begins to waddle down the train towards the woman standing by the door. She is finely dressed, with pearls at her throat and her raven hair tied into fashionable braids that form a crown around her head. She is breathing hard, and there is an unbound fear leaking from her eyes that puts Riyo on edge. She catches Raith’s eye and tilts her head in that direction.

Ex-sergeant Ixel nods and pulls her defunct badge from her pocket. Rolleck the Lost stands too, adjusting his wolf pelt. Neither of them needs to say anything, as their marks of office do their speaking for them.

The next carriage is reserved for the highest paying guests. A corridor one-person-wide threads down one side, allowing space for three expansive cabins that each contain two small bedrooms and a well-furnished seating area. Rolleck gives his best glare to the bravest busybody who attempts to follow him out of the dining car. The door he slams closed in their face remains closed, and they follow the ambling doctor to the last room.

The doctor’s hazy expression sharpens at the scene inside, and he pushes his glasses up his nose and hurries in. The distraught woman is knelt beside a man in a sharp suit who is slumped over on the table in the centre of the room. His jet-black hair is shot through with a single streak of white above his left temple, and his angular jaw is slack.

“Please,” the woman sobs. “He’s not breathing.”

With some effort, the doctor props the man up in his seat carefully and checks his pulse. Rolleck glances the windows, but both are closed. The last remnants of sunlight sparkle amidst the sand of the twilight desert outside, extending for miles into nothing. He walks over to one of the bedroom doors, wires tightening in his arm as his heart rate rises. It opens onto a dim space dominated by a pair of beds and another firmly-closed window. Rolleck checks under each bed but finds nothing.

“What are you doing?” the woman asks as he emerges, apparently just now noticing that Rolleck and Raith came in with the doctor.

“He is dead,” the doctor says. “I am sorry. There is nothing I can do.”

“What? No!” The woman grabs him, tears spilling from her eyes. “Save him!”

“Madam, he has been dead for several hours. Nothing could save him.”

“That… that’s not true! I spoke to him half an hour ago! Less! He…”

The doctor glances back at the body, uneasy. “But…”

“How did he die?” Raith asks while Rolleck checks the other bedroom.

“It looks like his heart failed,” the doctor says. He checks the man’s eyes again, then feels his skin. “He is cold. The stiffness of death is beginning to take hold.”

Raith’s nose twitches and she scowls with distaste before approaching the body. She checks his neck, turning his head with care. She sniffs again and undoes the top three buttons of his shirt. He was quite well built, with a broad, muscular chest, the left side of which is marred by a single red spot, like a pin-prick. She brushes her fingers over it and crumbles the coagulated blood away from the tiny wound.

“What are you doing to him?” the woman wails. “Who are you?”

Raith shows her badge, the World Force logo gleaming in the light of a mana-infused diamond lamp on the table.

“I’m afraid your husband has been murdered, Mrs…?”

Her features are stilled by shock. She looks like she might answer, but then crumples into a broken sob.

“It’s Mrs Angela Copperwright,” the doctor says quietly. “This man is Trade Prince Thaddeus Copperwright.” He is now stone-cold sober, his crystal-blue eyes fixed on the crying woman before him.

Raith sucks air past her teeth. “Oh.”

Rolleck checks the door of the room. Mrs. Copperwright’s key is still in the outside of the lock. Mr. Copperwright’s key lies on the table beside the documents he was looking over when he fell forward upon them.

“We should contact the guard,” Raith says, voice gentle. “Whoever did this is probably still on board.”

“What is happening here?”

The nasal voice belongs to a wiry man wearing thin, square spectacles and with his dark hair in a tail that falls halfway down his back. His blue uniform marks him a member of the train’s staff, but unlike other members of staff Rolleck has seen, he is armed. A pair of daggers hang in sheaths at his waist, and the way he holds himself hints at a strength that makes Rolleck’s sword hum and his eye begin to throb.

Raith holds up her badge. “There has been a murder on your train.”

“Nonsense,” the man says, face hard. “Our trains are the safest way to travel across the Songs.” He steps past Raith and leans over Mr. Copperwright. “This man has had a heart attack.” He turns back to them. “Get out of this room.”

Raith narrows her eyes. “No.”

“You will get out, sergeant.” He places a hand on one of his daggers. “You have been allowed onto this train by the good will of the daytime staff, along with your entourage. This decision can be rescinded on review by the night warden, and I am his chief of security, Elemus Fetch. Consider that before you open your mouth again.”

“I shall be returning to the dining car then,” the doctor says stiffly, waddling to the door.

“Of course, you will keep this unfortunate incident quiet, doctor Mildjum. We would not want to cause a stir among the passengers.”

“Ah, of course,” the doctor says.

Raith looks to Mrs. Copperwright, who is still curled in on herself, staring morosely at her late husband. She seems fragile and dead to what is happening around her, and Raith does not want to leave her alone with this man.

Rolleck puts a hand on her shoulder.

Fetch smirks as Raith’s shoulders slump and she follows Rolleck out of the room.

“We need to talk before we do anything rash,” the police officer says as they walk down the corridor.

“I know,” Raith says, but her anger is in her voice. She has failed enough people in the last few days to guilt her for the rest of her potentially immortal life.

Riyo has given up on comedy. What joviality had existed in the room before died as murmurs of worry and curiosity began to circulate the carriage. Her material might not be killer, but she at least has the instincts to read the room. Instead, she sits at one of the tables at the side of the room, nursing a drink and wondering.

“Um, hi,” someone says, dragging her unfocused eyes up from the surface of her beer.

A young man with red hair that practically glows in the lamplight is leaning against the chair on the other side of the table, smiling bashfully through his freckles. He is dressed in loose black clothing, but the way his side presses up against the chair reveals that there is something, maybe armour, beneath it. His uncertainty, the way his other hand lingers at his waist where a weapon might be concealed, and his rubbish outfit make Riyo immediately suspicious.

“Yes?”

“I just, um, wanted to talk to you for a moment. You know?”

“Why?”

“Uh.” he glances around. Nobody is paying him the least bit of attention. He lowers his voice and leans forward anyway. “You’re with the police guy and the World Force woman, right? You got on with them.”

“Yeah, they’re my friends. What’s this about?”

He slides into the seat opposite her and looks around again. “Could you keep your voice down a little?”

“Why? Everybody else is talking in groups in normal voices. Whispering just makes you look weird.”

The man blinks. “I… I never thought of it that way. Look, okay, I’m not very good at this yet. I’m still learning. The thing is, I’m,” he looks around again and leans as close as the table will allow before hissing, “an assassin.”

The door to the next carriage opens, and Raith and Rolleck return, followed by a gloomy looking member of staff with his cap shadowing his eyes.

“We are sorry for the disruption to your evening,” he says, his voice carrying through expectant silence with a touch of boredom to it. “One of our passengers had a minor health scare. A doctor has seen to him and assures us that his condition is not life-threatening, and that resting in his cabin is the best course for him.”

“That’s not true,” Raith says, sitting down beside the young man and effectively trapping him against the window. “A trade prince has been assassinated.”

Rolleck sits down beside Riyo and scowls across at Raith, then gestures at the stranger with his head. Riyo is just staring at him.

“Oh,” Raith says. “Who are you?”

“I’m, uh, no one,” he says.

“He’s an assassin,” Riyo says.

“Please keep your voice down,” he whines.

“Oh,” Raith says, turning in her seat to face him.

“Okay. I know this looks bad.”

“Just a bit,” Riyo says. “But why did you even tell me that?”

“I need to deliver a message on behalf of my mentor,” he reaches into one of his pockets and pulls out a folded piece of thick, luxurious paper. “I’m with the guild, you see, but I’m just a trainee.”

Raith snatches the paper from his hand and unfolds it.

“Oh, I used to visit the Assassins’ Guild all the time,” Riyo says. “How’s Master Violante?”

“Um, grumpy, mostly, I think. His back aches worst around this time of year.”

“This document certifies that Trade Prince Thaddeus Copperwright and family are, with no exceptions, protected from Guild contracts against them. It’s signed T. Violante.”

“My mentor and I were supposed to deliver that to Mr. Copperwright. He just paid for it.”

“That seems extremely convenient, considering it clearly has not been delivered yet and Mr. Copperwright has been assassinated in the cleanest and most professional hit I’ve ever seen.” Raith places the letter carefully on the table in front of the assassin. “Where is this mentor of yours?”

“I, uh, that is, I’m sure she’s-”

“You don’t know.”

“Well, not as such, no. She said something was off and went to look into it. That was an hour ago. But… but she knows about the exemption.”

“Yet she left it here,” Rolleck says quietly. “With you.”

“She’s an honourable assassin!” he says, a little too loud, then winces and lowers his voice too much. “She follows the rules. People who don’t get a taste of their own poison. That’s just the way our organisation works! It’s actually really stressful when you’re not sure you even know all the rules yet.”

“I believe him,” Riyo says before Raith can turn her scowl into words. “Obviously people find it really hard to trust a bunch of professional killers, so they’re really strict on their rules. They’re a bit like the thieves in that.”

“The last thief we fell in with left us to die in a cave,” Rolleck says. “I’m convinced Colourful saw that map from somewhere and snuck out without telling us.”

“Of course,” Raith says, covering her eyes for a moment. “I did wonder how you found the dumb ruins so quickly.”

“Colourful didn’t technically break the deal,” Riyo says. “We got the map and he just got to see it. That was the agreement. He didn’t say he’d help us fight, and it’s our fault we broke the map.”

“You’re defending him?”

“He’s a jerk, don’t get me wrong,” Riyo says. “But he stuck to the deal. The assassins are the same–they might find a way around something, but they’ll stick to the letter at least. This contract was agreed. The fact that it was in transit means it was paid for. That it wasn’t physically delivered yet isn’t a big enough loophole for Ginger’s mentor to avoid an assassination of her own if she did kill that guy.”

“So there are actually two mysterious killers on this train,” Raith says. She turns to Ginger. “What’s your mentor’s name?”

“Frostbite,” Ginger says.

“That’s not a name.”

“Well obviously.” Ginger looks at Raith like she’s stupid, but her expression makes him wilt. “Sorry. But we’re assassins. We don’t go by our real names, even with each other. My name is Shadowslice.”

“Your name is Ginger,” Riyo says before turning to Rolleck with a glint in her eye. “You know what this is?”

“Another awful situation we’ve stumbled into?”

“A murder mystery! On a train!”

Rolleck sighs.

“Ravi and Glitter are going to love this. I’m going to find them. Raith, you talk to that doctor and see if he knows anything more about how the guy died. Rolleck, you find a way to talk to the lady again and find out if anybody else was in or out of his room. We’re right in the heart of the Glimmering Desert, weeks from anywhere on foot, so the killer is probably still on the train!” She hops up and jumps over Rolleck’s lap to get out. “Ginger, find your mentor. It sounds like she had a hunch about what’s going on.”

She darts off through the crowd towards the front of the train, leaving the three of them to stare after her.

“Why is she so into this?” Raith asks.

“She’s into everything,” Rolleck says. “She has trouble sitting still.”

“We probably should have told her what that Fetch guy said, then. Otherwise she’s going to end up on the wrong side of the night staff.”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference,” Rolleck says staring despondently up at the ceiling of the carriage. The mana gems lighting it are a soft sky blue because the clean white light of a mana diamond would be far too expensive, even for the Sultan of the Rails. “The killer didn’t take the mana diamond, so we can assume either they are already very rich, they are extremely disciplined, or they weren’t hired and had a personal or ideological motive.” He stands. “I suppose I’ll ask his wife if anybody would want him dead.”

Raith turns to Ginger. “Know of anything that would kill someone and make it appear like they died a few hours ago?”

“What? Um. No? No. There are a lot of poisons I don’t know about yet, though.”

“I’m sure.” She taps the table with a fingernail. The night is flushing her with a comfortable second wind, making her restless. “Go find your master.”

“Um, okay.” Ginger casts about the dining car for a moment before slipping from his seat. He moves as though he has something to hide.

Raith sighs, then makes her way over to the bar. Doctor Mildjum is sitting quietly at its far end, the window beside him now a square of rushing darkness. He grimaces as Raith sits beside him.

“I just want to keep my head down,” he says, finishing another whiskey.

“Sure,” Raith says. She nods to the barman and orders a pair of drinks. “I don’t, though. I want to make sure a murderer gets their due.”

“Very noble,” Mildjum accepts the new glass and raises it to his lips as if to throw it back in one go, then stops, sighs, and lowers it back to the bar. “I’ve never seen anything like it, okay?” he says. “I believe her that she saw him alive not long ago, but medically he’s been dead for hours. That’s all I can tell you.”

“What can you tell me about Copperwright himself?”

“What most people in this car could tell you,” Mildjum says. He does drink, this time, but slowly. “He was an ambitious man. Made his fortune in spices, of all things. He created a machine that refines them and spent years researching different kinds across all the Songs. Once he started bringing them together and blending them, he was off from strength to strength. The Culinarium signed an exclusive deal with him. A bunch of high-profile restaurants, too. He expanded into other areas, but mostly stuck with food. Nowadays, his blends flavour just about every meal in the central ten.”

“Any major rivals?”

“No. That was his route to success. Nobody had thought about spice on the scale he did before. He exposed and filled a gap in the market in one fell swoop.”

“His business seems like a dead end, then,” Raith says, taking a swig from her own glass. The whiskey is dark and earthy, hot in her throat.

“He was a nice man, by all accounts. No enemies in the political sphere. A respected family man. The Board of Unfettered Trade was happy to make him a prince.”

“Hmm,” Raith says. She finishes her drink. “Sometimes, nice men make bad men look ugly enough that they get resentful.”

“That’s a sad truth,” the doctor says.

“Well, thank you for your help,” Raith says.

“You should give this one up, sergeant,” he says. “There is too much you cannot see, here. Too much darkness to hide a blade.”

“Then by the Writ it’s my duty to bring light.” She stands. “Besides, I’m at my best in the darkness.”

She wanders back over to her table and leans against it, arms crossed and brow furrowed. The train staff’s response to this is not unusual–the Sultan has a reputation for hiding anything that might discourage rail travel. He’s the sort of man that the Copperwright’s of the world make look bad by their honesty and decency. Even so, they ought to be worried about a killer on the loose on the train. They might not want people to know about it, but they should be doing something about it to avoid having to cover up more killings. The man with his eyes shaded by his cap is still standing by the door out of the dining car, relaxed and inattentive. People pass the door unhindered, heading for their beds, while still others arrive in search of late meals and cold drinks to pass another night of travel.

It’s too good. The problem was contained within minutes. They are surely practiced at such deceptions, but Raith’s instincts tell her this isn’t ad-libbed. The train knew this was going to happen.

Rolleck the Lost is not sure he is in the right place. Logically, he must be. He is on a train, and they are known for being very linear in design. One car follows another follows another. The engine is at the front. There is a fuel car. Some cars for the staff. Some cars for catering. Then comes the dining car, followed by sleeper cars interspersed with lounge cars. If he were to, for example, leave the dining car to investigate a woman’s claims that her husband was in trouble, then return to the dining car to talk to Riyo, logic would dictate that when he walked back through the same door, he would enter the same car as before.

The car is empty. Just wooden floor and barred windows leading on to endless night. Rolleck scratches his moustache. He checks the next car and finds another first-class sleeper, set up identically to the one that is now empty. He knocks on the door of the last cabin, but Angela Copperwright is not in there. Instead, a bleary-eyed woman in a night dress answers, then blinks at his sword before backing away from the door.

“Excuse me,” Rolleck says, shifting his shoulder to highlight his pelt. “I appear to have the wrong cabin. Have a good evening.”

The woman nods carefully and closes the door, leaving Rolleck to frown around at the other doors in the car. He returns to the empty car and meets a family walking through it.

“Excuse me,” he says. “I’m looking for someone who should be in this car. Did you pass through here on the way to the dining car?”

“Uh, yes,” one of the men says. He glances around. “Yeah, there are empty cars spaced out all along the train. I think it’s for if there’s a fire, or something?”

“I see,” Rolleck says. “And this empty car was here when you came through earlier?”

“I mean, yes?”

It must have been,” the other man says, his hand resting on their child’s shoulder. “I don’t remember it specifically, but it’s not like it could have moved.”

“Right,” the first man says.

“Right,” Rolleck says. “Sorry. Thank you for your help. I must have had one too many whiskies. Have a good evening.”

“You too,” the man says, and they wander away into the next car.

Rolleck stares. He stares for a long time, his brow furrowed.

“Sir?” the guard from the dining car says.

Rolleck looks up. The man’s hair drifts out from under his cap in curls, but the brim comes down far too low. He’s clean shaven, and he’s wearing a uniform with a slack jacket whose sleeves falls down over his hands. He looks quite young.

“Are you alright?”

“Yes, yes, fine,” Rolleck says. “But, uh, what number car is this?”

“This is car eighteen.”

“You see I thought for sure this was car seventeen,” Rolleck says.

The man shrugs. “Always been eighteen, sir. We have to have these empty cars to help contain fires, you see. A lot of people find themselves miscounting because of that.”

“I see. Thank you,” Rolleck says, then he stares at the empty car again.

Eventually, someone says, “Rolleck?”

He looks up to find Emerald standing beside him, a little girl clutching her leg.

“Do you remember this car being empty?”

Emerald looks around and shrugs. “There are a bunch of empty cars.”

“The next one along is the dining car,” Rolleck says.

“Uh huh,” Emerald says. “Are you okay?”

“I’m not sure,” Rolleck says.

“The next one isn’t the food one,” the girl pipes up, looking up at Emerald. “Mummy and Daddy are in the one before the food one.”

“Ah, you’re right,” Emerald says. She smiles down at the girl. “This is my friend Rolleck. He’s a policeman.” She looks back up. “This is Guinevere Copperwright.”

Rolleck blinks, then looks down at her. She backs up a little, hiding behind Emerald.

“I know he has a scary face,” Emerald says, “but he’s a good guy.”

Rolleck grits his teeth and looks away, unable to meet the little girl’s eyes. “Emerald…”

“Can we go and find Daddy now?”

Rolleck turns and marches towards the dining car, making Emerald blink.

“Rolleck?”

He slams through the door to find himself in another sleeper. He narrows his eyes, then strides up to the last cabin. His knock rings empty as Emerald and Guinevere catch up to him.

“This is our cabin,” Guinevere says. She pats her dress then pulls a big iron key from a pocket, running up to the door and pushing it in. It clicks loud, and the door falls open to her hands. The diamond mana lamp is still blazing on the table beside a pile of documents. The bedroom doors are closed.

“Mummy?” Guinevere says. “Daddy?”

She runs over to one of the bedrooms and opens it.

“Huh,” she says. “Daddy said he was going to work until bed time.”

“He’s dead,” Rolleck whispers, so that Emerald can hear but the girl cannot.

“What?” Emerald’s heart freezes in her chest. She turns. “Guinevere, wait in here for a second.” She pulls Rolleck out into the corridor and lets the door close.

“Thaddeus Copperwright was assassinated less than an hour ago. The night staff are covering it up.”

“By the Word. Poor Guinevere.” Emerald touches her chest, her soul still aching from her own father’s passing. She still hates that she had not spent his last few years with him, had not been able to stop her brother from killing him. But she, at least, had grown up beneath his wings. Known his love through to her adulthood. The heat of her pilot starts leaking between her teeth, making Rolleck flinch back.

“Where are the others?”

“Raith’s asking around. Riyo’s insistent we solve the mystery, but she’s just excited at the moment. If she meets Guinevere, she’ll stop the train dead and we won’t get under way again until she knows who did it.”

“Good,” Emerald says.

“I thought you might say that,” Rolleck says. “But we can be smarter than that.”

“Why?” Emerald growls. “Why should we?”

“Because the night staff are suspicious, and as soon as we do something overt, they’ll probably fight us. That’s their job.”

“And if they’re responsible?”

“At least one of them is a jackass, but that’s no reason to throw down with them before we can prove they’ve actually done anything wrong.”

Emerald growls again. “So what do I tell Guinevere?”

Rolleck lets out a sigh, then shakes his head. “I don’t know of a single way to tell a little girl her father is dead that doesn’t hurt, Emerald.”

“What of her mother?”

“I thought she was in her cabin. They must have moved her. We should make finding her the priority. Tell Guinevere we’ll help her find her mother. I do have some experience giving people bad news about their families. It always helps for them to be together. Bear it together.”

“Okay,” Emerald says, then glances out of the window. She blinks. “That’s not right.”

Rolleck follows her gaze. “Huh?”

“I just walked down most of the length of this train,” Emerald says. Outside, the track curls around a massive sand dune. She can see the engine. “It’s about fifty cars long. There should only be another twenty or so in front of us.”

“So why is the engine all the way over there?” Rolleck says. “Damnit. I knew I wasn’t going crazy.” He jogs to the other end of the car and peers through. Where the dining car should be is another empty space.

Emerald turns and opens the other door. The tracks stream away into the night behind them.

“Not again,” she says. “Not another magic train.”

Glitter is still not good at cards. The train’s day staff don’t play for high stakes, but even so he has already lost all the money Riyo gave him in Westunnel. Now he watches Ravi play. Vale is walking around the table, gesturing towards the other players and trying to give him signs that he is studiously ignoring.

She throws her hands up and wanders over to Glitter, slumping down in a chair beside him and making him shiver.

“What’s the point in having a massive advantage like me if you’re not going to use it to fleece idiots?” she mutters.

“Emerald says it’s ‘bad sportsmanship’,” Glitter says, swallowing his fear. Ghosts are just like normal people. Ghosts are just like normal people. Ghosts are just like-

Vale glares at him for a second then harrumphs, causing him to jitter nervously. “A vampire scribe, a scared robot, a goodie-no-shoes dragon. What kind of travelling circus is this?”

“What’s a circus?” Glitter says.

The table erupts in cheers, and Ravi gives an embarrassed smile, running his hand over his head feathers.

“Well played,” he says as one of the coal shovels drags the pot over in front of him.

“Always a pleasure to get a little richer,” the coal shovel says, then takes a swig of beer.

“Oh yeah,” Glitter says. “Who was the lady shovelling coal by herself for the night shift?”

Everybody shares stony looks, then turns their glare on Glitter.

“Ah, that’s a touchy subject,” Matteus says, coming over from his little desk in the corner of the car. “Only a few of the day staff can actually talk about her due to various, um, misunderstandings.”

Ravi raises an eyebrow, while Vale whispers, “Ooh, scandal.” She leans in close to Matteus.

“Did it just get a little colder?” he says.

“Maybe it’s just the topic of conversation,” Ravi says, shooting a look at Vale while Matteus is looking the other way. “Do you mean people physically can’t talk about her?”

“That’s right,” he says. “Avril is a lamia.”

“Oh wow!” Glitter says. “What’s a lamia?”

“They’re snake people,” Ravi says.

“That explains why she had a tail.”

“You didn’t think to ask this before if you saw she had a tail?”

“What? You’re the only person I’ve met with feathers.”

“I suppose that’s fair,” Ravi says, scratching his head. “Lamiae are really rare. I still don’t know why people wouldn’t be able to talk about her, though.”

“Lamiae carry a curse in their bloodline,” Matteus says. “They call it the kiss of silence. Sharing a kiss with one of their species makes you unable to speak of them again for as long as you live.”

Ravi turns to the card table. “So all of you…”

None of them will meet his eye.

“Wow,” Vale says, a little too loud.

Matteus glances towards her, his brow furrowed.

“She must be really pretty,” Glitter says.

“Oh, she is,” Matteus says. “When she looks at you with those eyes… well.” He clears his throat. “It’s a heady experience. If I weren’t married, I’m sure I would have fallen for her charms by now too.”

“Of course, some of these fine ladies and gents are also married,” the youngest member of the crew says. Alice is twelve and serving an apprenticeship as an engineer. Unfortunately, her mentor has disembarked under mysterious circumstances that may or may not have involved a fall. The crew glare at her.

“Now now, Alice,” Matteus says. “If you were a little older, there’s no saying you wouldn’t also be under her influence.”

“Yeah right. She’s a hag. I can see right through her.”

Even if someone had been able to argue with her, they would have been interrupted by Riyo. She bursts through the door with an angry cook clinging to the back of her shirt, which has the first few buttons undone. Her white leather trousers disappear into her crimson, fur-lined boots, and she strikes quite a figure with her sword at her hip and a wide grin on her face.

“Here you are,” she says.

“Miss! You can’t come back here. This area is for staff only,” the cook groans.

“Then why are my friends here?” Riyo says, gesturing at Glitter and Ravi.

“I… Ah. Conductor. Please tell this woman that this is a restricted area.”

One of the daytime guards glances towards Matteus, but he shakes his head. The man takes his hand off his baton and relaxes back into his seat.

“She’s part of the World Force group,” he explains. “I’m sorry for any inconvenience she has caused you, but please allow her through.”

The cook glares at Riyo, then turns back towards the kitchen cars. Riyo sticks her tongue out at the man’s back, then says, “Guess what? There’s been a murder!”

“What?” Matteus says, frowning. The other members of the day staff look uncomfortably towards one another.

“Some important guy was assassinated, and it’s up to us to figure out who dunnit!”

“Um, why is it up to us?” Ravi says.

“Because I say so,” Riyo says. There is a powerful glint in her eye. “Think about it! A murder mystery on a train deep in the desert. We have only eight hours before we arrive in Horologium, where the killer could escape and be lost forever. It’s right out of a novel. Come on. Let’s go!”

“Ohhh, the Sultan is not going to be happy about this,” Matteus says. He stands up and casts about, fretting. He turns back to Riyo. “I’m sorry, young lady, but you need to leave this to the night staff.”

“Can’t do that,” Riyo says. “They’re covering it up!”

“Th-they are?” He shakes his head. “Of course. Of course. They wouldn’t want to alarm the passengers. I’m sure they’re doing everything they can to locate and incapacitate the killer. The night staff are strong and competent rail officers. I’m sure they will be able to get it under control.” His reassuring smile is wonky as a derailed train.

Riyo narrows her eyes. “As a concerned passenger, I’d like you to talk to the night warden about it, if that’s alright?”

“He’s scary,” Glitter says, slipping a little snow from his shoulder and moulding it into a little Garth. Broad shouldered and slab faced, the sculpture doesn’t really capture the imposing nature of the man Glitter had seen. Even so, his thick sword drags at the chains around his waist.

“The night warden can be a little… intimidating,” Matteus agrees. “But he’s good at his job. I trust him with the train every night and nothing has gone wrong for the whole two years we’ve been partnered together.”

“Except for Trent,” Alice says. “And apparently a bunch of other members of staff and passengers who’ve gone missing.”

“Alice!” Matteus snaps. “I know you’re worried about your mentor, but Trent has been unreliable in the past.”

“He’s a drunk, but he’s never managed to fall off. Even when he was clambering about underneath the train while it was moving, boozed up to his eyeballs.”

“That’s really suspicious,” Ravi says.

“Uh huh,” Riyo says. “Maybe I should talk to this Garth guy myself.”

Matteus pinches the bridge of his nose. “Please. I appreciate you offering to help with the maintenance of the train, but its running and organisation are the responsibility of the staff.”

He shuffles over towards his desk, and when Riyo takes another step forward a few of the day guards stand up and reach for batons.

“I will speak to the night warden,” Matteus says. “But for now, I will have to ask you to return to the passenger cars.”

Vale leans over towards Ravi. “I’ll stay. See what happens.”

“Thanks,” Ravi whispers, then takes Riyo by the arm. “Come on.”

“Thank you for the game of cards,” Glitter says brightly as he waddles over to the door. The train wasn’t quite designed for his bulk, but he is able to shuffle sideways into the next car.

“I am still suspicious,” Riyo declares to the room at large, before letting Ravi lead her back out into the kitchen. “I’m still suspicious,” she says to Ravi.

“I know. But we’re not far out from Horologium. Maybe we should just keep our heads down, for once?”

“But…”

“Sure, the night staff are apparently weirdos, but that doesn’t mean they’re up to something hokey.”

“It doesn’t feel right, Ravi,” Riyo says. “It’s a train mystery.” She sounds sulky.

“Sometimes, it’s up to other people to solve train mysteries.”

The dining car has grown raucous again now that their fears have been allayed. The clatter of plates and the roar of conversation are still underpinned by the rattle of the train tracks beneath them. Riyo spots Raith at a table and beckons her over. Glitter will have a hard time getting through the packed car and has no chance of finding a comfortable spot by a table.

“What did you learn?” Riyo says.

“Nothing good,” Raith says. “I think the night staff are involved in the murder itself, not just covering it up.”

Riyo gives Ravi an I-told-you-so smile.

“Why?” Ravi says.

“Because they were too quick. They weren’t just ready to cover up something bad, they were ready for these exact circumstances. And now Rolleck’s gone missing. The guy’s wife, too. All the rooms in the next car are empty.”

“We haven’t seen Emerald for a while, either,” Glitter says, drawing a squiggly-mouthed worry face.

“Those two between them could blow this entire train apart,” Riyo says. “No way they got taken out without us noticing. Not by force, anyway.” She glances around. “Gravity Mould.”

Her eyes spring wide and she whispers her reality closed again. “There’s a crafter on board. Their reality’s covering at least the whole of this car, possibly the whole train.”

“That guy on the door,” Raith says. “He reacted when you opened your reality. Don’t look.”

“Glitter?” Riyo says.

“He’s really fidgety,” Glitter says. “Oh. He’s leaving.”

Raith looks up in time to see the man slide into the next car.

“I’m going after him,” she says.

“Wait,” Riyo says, but she’s gone. Her passage disturbs a number of glasses and plates on the tables she leaps between, but nobody in the car is quick enough to see her. She touches down as soft as a bird’s perch and hauls the door open.

The car is empty. And not just of people, but of everything.

Ravi wonders if he can do that, too. He’d been fast enough to react to Raith back when she’d fought them in Westunnel. Perhaps he could flit through the train without being seen, too? He decides he is not confident enough to try it, and instead follows Riyo as she bullies her way through the busy dining car by stubbornly headbutting anyone who won’t move out of her way.

“Oh,” she says, peering past Raith. “Wait, this car definitely wasn’t empty before, right?”

“No.”

“Magic train!”

“You got run over by the last magic train we were on,” Ravi says, turning back to the dining car. His eyes flutter from face to face, capturing the little details in the passengers’ expressions. He has to admit, he is a little intrigued and excited by the prospect of a murder mystery on a train. He spent too many years camping outside Fefille with little to do but watch the road. A handful of times he’d met travellers who were willing to trade freshly caught game for books, and their pages had been a small solace in the monotony of his vigil. If those stories of conspiracy and derring-do taught him anything, it’s that everyone is a suspect.

His eyes catch on someone else’s. A woman is watching him with an intensity that burns him from a casual glance. It hits him so quickly that his attention is already moving on, and when he looks back, he can’t find her. He’s left with only an impression of terrible cold, of blue as hazy and ephemeral as ice that skins the surface of a deep and eerie lake.

“Well that settles it,” Riyo says. “I’m going to talk to this night warden character.”

“Yeah,” Raith says, then looks to Ravi. “Your Trait seems quite strong. Do you think you can shut down that crafter?”

Ravi looks around at the empty car and sucks his teeth. “I have no idea what his reality actually does.”

“He’s swapping cars around, somehow,” Riyo says. “Or at least moving the things inside them.”

“I can resist things that affect me and destroy things created by a reality, but if he’s only affecting the train… I’m not sure what my curse breaker can do.”

“He probably won’t be able to affect cars you’re in,” Riyo says.

“But if he can move all the ones around the one I’m in, then there’s not much difference.”

“Oh,” Riyo says. “Yeah.” She scratches her head. “So if this crafter doesn’t want us talking to the night warden he can just keep moving us to the back of the train.” She shrugs. “Fine. I’ll shut him down the hard way.”

She opens her mouth to slam open her reality hard enough to knock the man’s cap off, but Raith covers it.

“Mghmty mlrf,” she says.

“The night staff have Copperwright’s wife,” Raith says. “No telling why. We shouldn’t rock the train until she’s safe.”

Riyo scowls. “That doesn’t make me want to crack that creepy guy’s reality any less.” She taps her foot. “Fine. It’s a train mystery, so we treat it like one: we investigate! Ravi, find the others. I’m going to see if he’ll let me talk to someone near the front of the train. Raith, solve the murder. We’ll meet back at the dining car by midnight. If we’ve got nothing new by then, or if any of us aren’t there on time, then we do a train mutiny.”

“Uh. I’m not sure that’s the right word,” Raith says.

“Train. Mutiny.”

Ravi sighs. “Sure. Train mutiny. Let’s go.”

Matteus Flamesbane is a weed of a man. He’s the easily exploitable type, who caves to just the tiniest bit of pressure. Vale thinks she could push him over, even with no physical body. She has trouble understanding how people like him think. How do they get what they want? How do they even survive in a world filled with men like Garth? Or even Ravi? Her new master might whine a lot, but he gets things done.

The problem with empathy is that if you spend too long thinking about other people’s feelings and needs, you forget about your own. Better, in her opinion, to focus on the feelings and needs that sustain your own soul.

Matteus greets his colleagues on the night shift with a cheer that they don’t return. Vale watches them sneer at his back, hears the jokes they make under their breath. Some of them are quite funny. She follows him through the crew quarters where the day shift are bedding down, through a couple of offices much nicer than his, until he reaches the door that leads through into the boiler room.

“Elemus,” he says, nodding deferentially to the bespectacled man at the door. This one sneers openly.

“Conductor,” he says. “Your shift is over.”

“Yes, I know, only I’ve heard something worrying that-”

“The matter is well in hand,” Elemus says. “Is there anything else?”

“Uh, I see. Well… It’s just that…”

“What?” Elemus’ voice is cold and sharp as the steel of his daggers.

“The, uh, the group that came with the World Force officer-”

“Are you telling me that, after two years of working together, you would give credence to the words of some fare-dodging hitchhikers over that of the night staff?”

“I just want to make sure I have the truth of it,” Matteus says, a slight whine in his pathetic voice. “After all, what they told me was the first I heard of it.”

“That is because it occurred on our watch, not yours. The problem is in hand, conductor.”

“Right. Right,” Matteus twists his moustache and turns away.

“You should get Garth to confirm it. Just to be sure.” Vale isn’t sure how much will get through to the reedy man, but he seems sensitive to her presence, and her words make him shiver.

He turns around, blinks up at Elemus as though he’s not sure why he’s done it, then clears his throat. “I’d like to speak to the night warden all the same,” he says, standing just that little bit taller. As though he has a spine after all.

“No,” Elemus says, voice flat.

Matteus shrinks again. He nods and walks away.

“Pfft,” Vale says.

The door to the boiler room cracks open. Elemus glances over his shoulder with a scowl but leans down to listen to someone say something.

“Ugh,” he says, then, “conductor.”

Matteus stops.

“The night warden would like a word with you.” He steps aside and gestures sharply. “Do not keep him waiting.”

Matteus smiles at Elemus as he passes, while the taller man rolls his eyes and shakes his head. Vale follows into the boiler room, then jumps at the sight of the creature coiled by the coal hatch, smoke and heat rolling over her oiled skin and russet-orange scales.

“Good evening, Avril,” Matteus says, nodding to the lamia.

Her hair is pink and falls in bangs that almost cover her eyes. Far from the femme fatale seductress Vale had pictured in her head, she looks coy. Shy. Her button nose and pale cheeks are scattered with freckles, and she clutches her left arm with her right hand, covering her bosom. Her arms are muscular, but she shrinks into her vest just as much as Matteus.

“Oh, hello conductor,” she says, her voice quiet and soft. “Um. Have you thought about my offer any more?”

“No, Avril. You know I’m married.”

“Of course. I’m sorry. I just… feel so safe with you. I know you’d look after me. And you’ve always been so kind to me, even though I’m like this.”

“You’ll find somebody who’s right for you, Avril. I know you will.”

The lamia sighs, pulling herself in even more. “I hope so.”

Matteus touches her shoulder as he passes her. It’s an entirely sexless, fatherly gesture, and it seems to disappoint her more than comfort her. Vale stares for a moment longer before remembering she’s supposed to be following the conductor. The door swings closed, but she slips through it and into the engine’s cabin.

The night warden heaves a lever, his enormous muscles bulging beneath his uniform. Steam hisses and the train shudders. He turns, then, and wipes sweat from his slab of a brow. A short step brings him close enough to loom over Matteus, who wilts as though the heat has begun to melt his limbs.

“You are concerned,” Garth rumbles.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Matteus says with a wince. “Just that I’ve heard something that would be of concern. If it was true. Which I’m sure it isn’t.”

“Passenger Thaddeus Copperwright, ticket number zero zero eight one nine one four six two, suffered a fatal heart attack. The full nature of his problem was concealed from the other passengers to avoid causing a panic.”

“Oh, poor Thaddeus,” Matteus says, unconsciously clutching at his own heart. Angela and Guinevere must be inconsolable.”

“Guinevere?” Garth’s eyes go an eerie pale red for a moment, so quick that Vale barely sees it. “Guinevere Copperwright, ticket number zero zero eight one nine one four six zero. She is Thaddeus’ daughter?”

“Yes,” Matteus says, blinking.

“Theirs was not a family booking.”

“Was it not?”

“Guinevere Copperwright,” the night warden says, his expression grim. “She was not in her family’s cabin. We will find her.”

“Oh, I should like to help,” Matteus says. “The poor girl.”

“Your shift is over, conductor. The night shift is responsible for this. Return to your cabin.”

“I-”

“Return to your cabin.” Though his tone is the same, there is steel in the command.

“Very well,” Matteus says after the split second of hesitation that is all his flimsy backbone can support. “Oh dear.”

Vale watches him leave, pouting, then turns to the night warden. He is looking at her.

She takes a step back as his eyes film over with that pale red again.

“Did you think you could hide from me?” he hisses, and his voice is two octaves higher. It’s filled with venom, and his hand is suddenly on the hilt of his sword. “The dead do not belong here.”

Vale leaps before she even sees his body move, but pain rushes through her back as she tumbles through the side of the car and out into the desert night. She rolls in the sand and reaches a panicked arm around her back. There is a shallow slit in her translucent skin, just below her ribs. There is no blood, and the pain quickly fades. But the wound is there, empty and cold. Maybe forever.

Vale shivers, then looks up to see the train streaming away from here between the dunes.

“Well shit,” she says.

Glitter’s machinery rumbles. His fans sap water from the air while he drains the heat from within his casing. Crystals form, coalesce, and bond. In a handful of seconds, unseen water vapor becomes beautifully sculpted stars of ice which slide down a frozen sluice he has created and onto the bar. The bartender picks them up with a pair of tongs and deposits them into a tall glass before pouring amber liquid over them. The couple who have ordered the drink remark in delight at the stars before wandering back to their table.

“Thank you, Glitter,” another of the bar staff says. She is tall and well-built, her navy uniform jacket cut like that of a tuxedo, her long blonde hair swept down to one side. Her name is Carolina, and she has co-opted Glitter to be her personal ice machine. Riyo has asked him to keep watch in the dining car for anything suspicious, so he doesn’t really mind.

“You’re welcome. So, how long have you been working on the train?”

“Oh, only a few years. I don’t think I’ll be staying much longer.”

“Why not?”

“Itchy feet,” she says. “I’m not good at sticking to one thing for a long time.”

“Oh. I am very good at staying still.”

“So I see,” she says, plucking up the next ice stars and popping them into a different shaped glass. She takes a pair of bottles in one hand and pours from both into a metal cylinder. She then adds some regular ice cubes and a pair of leaves before shaking the cylinder around.

“What kind of drink is that?”

“It’s called a ‘chill wind’. Very popular on the desert stretch of the journey.” She pours the contents of the cylinder into the glass, and though she did not measure the amounts of liquid, the drink fills the glass exactly.

“You are very good at that,” Glitter says.

“Thank you,” she says, smiling at the recipient of the drink.

“I heard that there was a tragedy earlier while I was in the engine,” Glitter says. He feels Carolina grit her teeth.

“No, just a minor health scare for one of the passengers. But rumours grow very quickly on the train. It’s a long and boring journey to Ragg, so people like having things to talk about.” The tone of her voice has changed. Glitter is not sure, but he thinks she might be angry.

Glitter ponders for a moment while he makes more stars, then decides he has little to lose. “I don’t think that you believe that.”

Carolina is pouring more drinks, and some alcohol sloshes out of the cylinder onto the bar.

“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” she says quietly. “Like I said, I’m moving on soon.”

“So it doesn’t matter if you know that someone is covering up a murder?”

She paints an uncomfortable smile on her face as she serves the drink, then turns to Glitter. “That’s right. Nothing I can do about it. The night staff run this train while the conductor refuses to see anything he doesn’t want to. As long as nobody crosses them, the train runs smoothly. That’s all I care about.”

“I don’t think my friends are going to let that continue,” Glitter says carefully. “They are not very good at ignoring things.”

“Then the night staff will deal with them. Trust me,” she says, turning back to the drinks, “they’re monsters.”

“I was worried about that,” Glitter says. “My friends seem to like fighting monsters.”

Carolina sighs. “Great.” She sits down beside Glitter while someone in a fresh white apron takes over her mixing responsibilities. “I suppose you can’t convince them to back down?”

“No. I don’t think I could even if I wanted to.”

“Then…” she lets out a frustrated breath. “Just try not to destroy the train?”

“I will try my best. I don’t think the others would want to hurt any of the passengers anyway.”

“Well, that’s more than can be said for the night staff.” She stares at one of the bottles on the shelf beside her and then shakes her head. “Look. If you want to stand any chance at all, you need to find a way past Uther.” She looks down the car at the guard with the cap over his eyes. He has joined a table over at that end to play cards with a group of surly-looking men. “He’s a crafter, I think. I don’t know what his reality does, though. All I know is that he uses it to cheat at cards.”

“Oh!” Glitter says. “I like playing cards.” He draws a smiley face on his glass, angled towards Carolina. “Thank you very much.” He extends his little legs and begins to waddle slowly down the carriage. People stare at him in mute fascination as he passes their tables and press themselves against walls and furniture so that he can fit down the narrow alley of space down the centre of the car. He stops beside the table where the card game is taking place and says, “Hello!”

“You want somethin’?” a man with a heavy scar on his cheek says. His face is harder than Glitter’s glass.

“I am learning to play card games,” Glitter says, plucking his mana gem from the bottom of his chassis and snaking it out of his shoulder on a rope of snow. “I was hoping you would let me join you. My friend says this mana gem I found in the desert might be worth a lot.”

All eyes at the table touch the gem for a hungry moment, then turn to Uther, who nods slowly, a smile on his face.

“Well sure, why not?” the scarred man says. “Always nice to help a newbie, right fellas?”

There are some nods and smirks from the other players, and Uther gathers up the cards. He shuffles them so quickly that even Glitter cannot follow the movements, then spins them out to the players. They all come to a stop in neat piles before each man at the table.

Glitter picks up his cards with delicate strands of snow and presses them against his glass.

“Oooh,” he says. His cards are good.

The men watch him, barely looking at their own cards as the game unfolds. He is considered all-in with his mana gem, and it sits against neat little stacks of coins from the other players. At the turn of the cards, Glitter whistles with glee, and the men all give him pleasant smiles.

“Ah, to have my beginner’s luck back,” the scarred man says as Glitter draws his winnings towards him. He draws a grin on his glass.

“Let’s play again!”

They do, and Glitter wins a couple more rounds, shared amongst other wins. Uther doesn’t win any, but he continues his lightning-fast shuffles with the same small smile beneath the shadow of his cap. Glitter is having fun. He likes how congenial the men are, how they talk about their businesses and the places they have been as they win and lose alike. He has almost forgotten why he is playing when he suddenly finds himself all in against Uther, the other players having folded. His mana gem shines atop the pile in the middle, along with most of the other players’ wealth. It is time for the final draw, and it could go either way.

Glitter’s crystal pulses a little faster. He remembers what Riyo said about buying him presents when they reach Horologium, and he realises he does not want to lose. Not for anything. Though he knows Emerald will be angry with him, he expands his awareness. Not just to the men’s faces and hands, but to the finest point of the energy spectrum. Fine enough that he can sense the difference between the dyes on the cards.

Glitter rifles the deck from bottom to top. The topmost card is the Captain of Ice. It will win Glitter the game. He focuses on that card, on his opponent, barely aware of anything else as Uther reaches for the deck. His mouth moves, barely a breath of a word, and from one moment to the next, the card changes.

The entire deck has changed, the order completely different. As Uther turns the card over and places it next to the rest of the face-up cards, Glitter lets his attention return to the rest of the game. The men are all smiling, watching him. And he realises his own cards have also changed. The face-up ones, too. He is all-in with the one and two of a useless suit.

“Oh,” he says. His crystal feels suddenly heavy. The men all knew. They have been luring him to this point, waiting for a time when he would be unable to see it until it was too late. He clears his glass and gives a long, rueful pulse of light. He supposes this was his aim the whole time, so he shouldn’t be too upset. One of the new face-up cards is the Captain of Ice, and he checks it over. It is the same card that had once been his ticket to wealth. The cards have not moved, they all instantly changed places the moment Uther whispered the word ‘shuffle’.

“I would like to accuse you of cheating,” Glitter says.

“I’m sure you would,” Uther says. His voice still sounds bored. “But it’s time to show your cards.”

The men’s smiles have turned predatory, unsettling. But Glitter has faced cruel men before. He has also faced ghosts and nightmares, and intends to face the evil that lies at the heart of Calis. He finds he is not scared by their mean looks. In fact, he is angry.

He inhales heat. He has found that living creatures resist having their energy drawn from them, but inanimate objects do not. The cards offer no resistance as they are sapped of energy. What little moisture exists within them freezes, expanding even as the bonds that hold their very essence together lose their grip. The deck, the face-up cards, and both players’ hands crumble away to nothing.

“It seems that we will never know who won the hand,” Glitter says. His glass frosts over, but he draws nothing in it. “Perhaps we should call it a draw.” He snaps up his gem with a whip of snow just as the men’s smiles turn to scowls. “I will let you keep your money, though I don’t think you deserve it.”

“Hand it over, tin can,” the scarred man says, standing and reaching for a knife at his belt. His voice has a growl of undeniable authority to it. The other men shift in their seats, bringing hands closer to weapons.

Uther raises a hand, his expression troubled. “Unfortunate things happen sometimes, Tarren. Glitter has been more than reasonable in only taking back his buy-in. I’m sorry that this game had to end on such a sour note.”

“If you want to avoid that in future,” Glitter says. “Consider not cheating.” He begins sidling back down the car. It isn’t the most dignified of exits, but it’s all he can manage without bowling one of his fellow passengers over.

Uther Traviere watches the robot waddle his way back towards the bar. The silence around the table is volatile. He can feel Tarren’s eyes burning through the rim of his cap.

“What was that?” the con man hisses.

“Prudence,” Uther says. “Trust that the train will deal with him.”

“You say that a lot.”

“Has it ever been untrue?”

The lack of a response is answer unto itself, and Uther stands.

“You will have to continue your racket without me for a while. I must speak to the night warden.” He ignores their quiet grumbles and walks quickly to the end of the carriage. As soon as he is through the door, he shuffles the train, changing the order of the carriages so that he is beside the engine, then steps back through. Avril is leaning hard into her work and ignores him as he passes.

“Uther,” Garth says without turning from the pressure gauges that tell the tale of the train.

“Night warden. We need to deal with these hitchhikers. Soon.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve been played.”

Garth turns slowly, and Uther has to swallow and steel himself to avoid stepping back from him.

“You were beaten?”

“N-no. No, night warden, but one of them has seen through my reality, and the crafter among them knows I’m here.”

Garth’s eyes flash red, so quickly that it might just have been a reflection, a trick of the light.

“The Sultan will not be pleased if his train should be damaged. Nor if it should be delayed.” He drums his fingers along the hilt of his blade. “But then his request this time was dangerous. Can you gather them? Decouple them?”

“Some of them are gathered already, but one is in the dining car. I may be able to bring most of them together, but we can’t decouple that car. Another has a way of resisting.”

“Then deal with as many as you can. I will ensure that those left are removed with no distress or delays.”

“Yes, night warden,” Uther says.

Ravi Matriya suspects that his friends are at the back of the train, furthest from where they can cause trouble. He is proved to be correct, when, after passing through only two sleeper carriages and one empty one on his way to the back, he finds himself back in the dining car.

“Ravi,” Glitter says, making him jump. The robot is backed against the wall by the door, his crystal hidden by a perfect sheet of frost. “That Uther guy is changing the order of the carriages.”

“Yeah,” Ravi says, scratching his head. “I was just trying to get to the back of the train, now I’m here.”

“His reality is called ‘Shuffle’. He doesn’t move things around, they just change. Instantly.”

“That’s a tricky ability to deal with,” Ravi says slowly. Then, “are you okay?”

“No. People are mean.” He sounds sullen.

“I guess they are,” Ravi says.

The door opens again, and a waiter comes through with a tray, its scent wafting up to join amalgam of smells that make up the dining car. Ravi feels a twinge in his chest, and it’s as though the sound of chatter and cutlery grows quieter. The colours seem to fade, and through all the distractions a familiar chill touches him. He blinks, and the feeling passes.

“Glitter,” he says, looking down the carriage and drawing his dagger.

“Oh!” Glitter says, and snow whips out from his shoulder. It wraps around something, and then there is a woman by the bar. She wasn’t there a second ago, but nobody else seems to bat an eyelid at her appearance.

She looks down at the snowy tendril gripping her wrist, her pale grey eyes wide. Her ethereal, silver hair is caught up in a tail, and she is wearing a long, white coat that looks like it is made of silk.

“What?” she says.

“Ghost!” Glitter says.

“But she’s not,” Ravi says. There is a chill surrounding the woman similar to the sensation he gets from Vale, but she is alive.

“Huh,” Glitter says after a moment. “She feels like a ghost. But also… yeah. Not.”

After a moment, the woman turns back to look through the dining car. “You need to let me go,” she says, and Ravi feels it in the pit of his stomach. His heart picks up, and the feathers on the back of his neck twitch in a way that tells him to flee.

“Who are you?” he says, gripping the dagger tighter.

“None of your business,” she says. “But if you don’t let me go, my hunt gets that much harder.” She glances back at him, meets his eyes, and his dagger almost slips from fingers gone numb with imagined cold.

Glitter’s grip loosens, and her arm is free of the loop quicker than he can credit. Her other hand flashes out from beneath her coat and strikes like an adder’s bite, bringing a wicked sickle point first into Ravi’s chin. It stops perfectly, denting his skin without breaking it. Ravi’s breath catches in his throat, his body going still. The woman tilts her head slightly and sniffs, then says, “Damnit.”

The sickle trails its way down into Ravi’s chest feathers and stops just over his heart. The movement is gentle, and Ravi allows himself a shallow gasp of air as the woman nudges aside some of his feathers to reveal the skin beneath.

“You’re bleeding,” she says.

“Huh?” Ravi manages, blinking for a moment before remembering she’s holding a weapon against his chest.

“Oh. She’s right,” Glitter says. “But…”

“Do you have a needle?” The woman’s voice is low and intense. “Something very thin and very sharp.”

“I… I have this,” he brings the dagger up carefully, holding it between thumb and forefinger and letting it dangle, lest she think he’s trying to attack her.

She shakes her head. “Won’t do. You’ve got maybe a minute to find one.”

“Here,” Glitter says, and a platter of snow rises up beside him. After a moment, the powder shifts to reveal a shimmering shard of ice, not much thicker than a hair.

The woman snatches it up and, with the same lightning movements as before, stabs Ravi in the chest.

“Wah!” Glitter shouts, finally drawing the attention of others in the dining car.

Ravi’s mouth is moving, but no sound emerges. A second later, the woman withdraws the needle. It is smudged red with diluted blood, but impaled on the very tip is a sliver of something purple.

Ravi staggers back into Glitter, who teeters into the wall. He clutches his chest and finally manages to exhale a shocked, “Gah!”

The woman sniffs the icicle, grimacing at what she smells there. “This is enough, though,” she says, and produces a little glass vial from her coat. “Proof enough there’s a wither on the train.” She snaps the end of the icicle off into it the vial and stoppers it, then finally looks at Ravi again. “I hope your heart is strong, boy. There’s still some poison in there.” She turns and is gone.

Ravi is left leaning against Glitter, staring at an empty space along with a handful of other wide-eyed passengers. He finds he still cannot find anything to say. In fact, he feels exhausted. His eyes are already drooping closed.

“Ravi?” Glitter says, voice urgent but distant. “Ravi!”

He feels like there is a lot of attention on him, but he’s so tired it’s hard to focus.

“Ubble,” he says, before gravity drags him to the ground.

“What are we waiting for?” Guinevere Copperwright says. “Why are we so far from mummy and daddy’s carriage?” She wrinkles up her nose and glares at the empty carriage around them. “I don’t get it.”

“It’s like a magic trick,” Emerald says, forcing calm and patience into her voice. “We go through the train but end up right back here.”

“Okay,” she says. “But why?”

“I’m not sure yet.” It keeps them from bringing a murderer to justice. From interfering with a scheme that has taken away a young girl’s father. They have been stuck here long enough that Emerald is ready to burn this train to ashes, carriage by carriage.

“I want to see my daddy,” Guinevere says. She isn’t crying, but Emerald can tell she’s close. She grits her teeth and clenches her fists.

“I think someone else is about to fall for this trick,” Rolleck says. He sits, infuriatingly calm, facing the wall of the carriage. His eyes are closed, his legs crossed.

“What then?” Emerald says.

“Then we’ll have an idea of how it works. Magic tricks are spectacular to watch but learning how they work is a double-edged sword. Either the method is so impressive that it makes it even better, or it’s a disappointment.”

A few more seconds pass, then Rolleck’s eyes snap open just as there’s a click from the door. He rams his sword through the wall, barbs digging into his knuckles as they come to rest against the wood.

“Huh?” former sergeant Ixel says, her hand still on the door handle.

“Um,” Emerald says.

“Check the window, please,” Rolleck says.

Emerald looks out, craning around to the front and back. “Oh! We’re much further up.”

Rolleck allows himself a smile. “It can’t be simple moving the carriages around to remove individual passengers. Sometimes whoever it is will be able to move the carriage that person is in to the back, but sometimes they’ll have to move the back carriage up, capture them in it, and move them back. Too many people come in and out of the dining car to easily move it, so it’s more likely they’d take the latter option when trying to get at someone moving out of the dining car.”

Guinevere looks up at Emerald. “What?”

“I think officer Rolleck figured out the magic trick,” Emerald says. “But why did you stick your sword through the wall?”

“It was a gamble. I guessed they wouldn’t be able to move the carriage if some element connected the inside to the outside. Perhaps normally it would just break whatever it was, but my sword doesn’t break so easily.”

“But now you’re stuck there,” Raith says, frowning.

“But you aren’t. Take Guinevere into the dining car and ensure she’s safe. Hurry. I’ll catch up with you later.”

“Okay. Come on sergeant,” Emerald says, leading Guinevere past her into the dining car. The girl watches Rolleck over her shoulder, face uncertain. Raith takes another look at him, then steps back through after the dragon.

Rolleck withdraws his sword, then rises to face the door. A quick glance out of the window confirms that he is once more at the caboose. The tracks clatter by beneath him, and the shimmering resplendence lights the desert sand in amaranthine silence. Minutes pass in emptiness, but with each that does, his sword sings louder. It can feel violence drawing in closer.

When the door opens again it is with the sound of tromping feet. Blue uniforms and edged weapons begin to fill the space before him. Eyes of flame and fear watch him from beneath the caps of the night guard.

“You realise, officer,” Elemus Fetch says, striding in behind his wall of steel, “that you have no jurisdiction here. The Sultan is the master of the rails. No king or general can usurp his word so long as his trains are the lifeblood of the Songs.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Rolleck says, running his hand over his pelt. “This isn’t a mark of station. It’s a reminder. That I’m an agent of justice, a fighter of crime.” He stares into Fetch’s eyes, and the man’s smile falters. “And you are a criminal, Elemus Fetch. You stand guilty of conspiracy to cover up a murder. And, quite frankly, of wasting police time.”

“Enough stupid talk,” Fetch snarls. “Kill him and feed his body to the desert.”

Rolleck raises his sword and smiles. “Nowhere to run on a train like this,” he says quietly.

The voice just laughs.

Riyo Falsemoon blinks at the car before her. She has expected to have an argument with a cook or the conductor, but instead the roiling heat of the boiler room washes over her. The door ahead must lead into the engine’s cabin.

“That’s really convenient,” she says, starting for the door.

“Who are you?”

The nervous voice makes Riyo turn, her reality a whisper away. Behind her is a vision of soft beauty. Her amber eyes peek out from beneath a curtain of quiet pink hair, and the light of the fire she tends picks out the delicate freckles on her cheeks. In spite of her height and strength she seems to shrink in Riyo’s gaze, lowering herself on the rugged amber scales of her tail. The huge sack of coal she is hauling makes a metallic thunk as she drops it by the furnace.

“I’m Riyo,” Riyo says. “I was looking for the night warden?”

“Oh,” the lamia says. Her eyes flit to Riyo’s sword and, briefly, to the open buttons of her shirt. They fail to find her eyes, and she slithers the rest of the way into the room with a swaying motion that makes her hips wiggle. “He’s a busy man. The train takes a lot of attention.”

Her voice is at just the right volume to catch on Riyo’s ears and send a thrill down her spine. It’s as though she’s whispering from right beside her.

“I think he has a break coming up soon, though.”

“That’s okay,” Riyo says, affording herself a single glance over her shoulder at the front of the train. “I can wait a little while.” She watches as the lamia picks up a blackened shovel and pulls open the chute hiding the true intensity of the flame. Light claims her, shining off her oil-slick muscles and turning her eyes to burning portals. Somehow, seeing her bathed in that fire makes her seem vulnerable. She shoots another quick, self-conscious glance at Riyo before she starts shovelling.

“I can help with that, if you like,” Riyo says. She has taken a step closer, though she doesn’t remember doing it.

“Oh no,” the lamia says, flustered. “I couldn’t ask you to do that. It’s my job, after all.”

“It’s no trouble at all,” Riyo says. “Gravity Mould.” She can feel another reality wrapped around her own, but it doesn’t matter. She’s stronger. The bag of coal rises and tilts, pitching its contents down the chute and into the inferno below. The flames scatter and roar as they take the new fuel, and she hears the hiss of boiling water in the tank before them.

“Oh wow,” the lamia says, covering her mouth. Her other hand comes to rest on Riyo’s shoulder, and her skin practically fizzes with electricity beneath the cotton of her shirt. “That’s so very impressive.”

“It’s nothing,” Riyo says with a grin. Their eyes meet, and for a moment it’s as though Riyo has fallen into a warm, rose-scented bath. Then she looks away, and the blush hides her freckles. She snatches back her hand, too, and Riyo feels colder for the lack of contact. “What’s your name?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says, offering out a tentative hand. “I’m Avril.”

“Nice to meet you!” Riyo tries not to shiver as their palms meet. Her hand is calloused from her work, but her grip is soft. Riyo holds on for a little too long, but Avril doesn’t pull back.

“Um, the furnace won’t need stoking for a little while, now. Would you… would you like to wait here with me?” The heat in the lamia’s cheeks makes Riyo’s heart flutter.

“Of course!” She can hardly remember why she’s here anyway.

“I don’t have a corporeal form,” Vale tells the desert.

The desert does not respond.

“I shouldn’t be standing on the floor. I shouldn’t be able to feel the stupid sand beneath my feet.”

The stupid sand shifts under her boots with each step she takes. The rails soak up the shine of the resplendence with their worn-to-matt steel, sleepers hiding beneath windswept grains.

“I should be able to move way faster than a big metal train.”

The moon looks washed out, the grandeur of her purple light stolen by the wavering colour of the sky.

“This sucks.”

Another dune folds back against the sky to reveal the endless roll of the Sultan’s road, empty of train. Empty of light. Empty of hope.

“Maybe I’m thinking about it wrong.” Vale stops beside a cactus and scratches a phantom itch on her head. “I’m not going to catch up by walking, that’s for sure.”

The cactus politely keeps its silence.

“Maybe it’s not about moving. Maybe it’s about being.” She turns to the cactus. “I shouldn’t exist, right?” The cactus agrees, just to keep it from getting awkward. “Most people don’t leave a ghost. Being a ghost means continuing to be even after I’ve officially ceased to be.” She points at the cactus as it falls into place. “So, since I shouldn’t be here, there’s no reason I shouldn’t be on the train instead.”

The chill night air shifts in the wind, blowing sand between the needles of a lonely cactus.

“Ha!” Vale says, pumping her fist in triumph.

Glitter jumps. “Ah!”

“Hi Glitter,” Vale says, then looks around. “What the heck happened?” Ravi is lying on the floor with a worried crowd lingering around him. A short, fat man with thinning hair and spectacles is kneeling beside him. “I wasn’t even gone for an hour!”

“There was an invisible lady,” Glitter says. “She said Ravi was poisoned.” He has a nervous expression drawn on his glass.

Vale kneels beside the balding man and peers at him. “Who’s this guy?”

“A doctor,” Glitter says.

“He smells drunk.”

“I think he is.”

“Pffft,” Vale says. She looks at her hand, translucent and ephemeral, and wiggles her fingers. Then she shrugs and shoves her hand into Ravi’s chest. It feels a little different from last time. A little… warmer, perhaps? She moves her hand closer to his heart and the strange heat increases. She frowns down at him in concentration.

“What are you doing?” Glitter says.

“I’m trying to ascertain exactly the nature of his complaint,” Dr. Mildjum says.

“I’m trying to ghost magic him back to life,” Vale says as though the doctor hadn’t spoken. “If I can just remember how to… Aha!”

Ravi jerks upright like a catapult going off, yelling like he’s been stabbed. Dr. Mildjum practically rolls over backwards and the surrounding crowd gasp.

“Master!” Vale says.

“Ugh. Vale?”

“You were poisoned, or something, but I gave you some ghost juice to help you fight it.”

Ravi touches his chest. “I feel like I’ve had ice water dumped on me.”

“Better than being dead,” Vale says. “I should know.”

“Thanks, I guess,” Ravi says. He pulls himself to his feet and looks around at all the people staring at him. “Um, thank you for your concern, everyone, but I seem to be okay now.” He reaches down to help the doctor to his feet.

“I don’t know what just happened,” Dr. Mildjum says, “and I’m not sure I want to.”

“Probably for the best,” Ravi says. “Thank you for trying to help, though.”

He nods, uneasy, and wanders over towards the bar again. As the crowd disperses, the far door of the carriage opens and Emerald ducks through, her wings tucked in tight against her back. She is leading a young girl by the hand. Raith Ixel follows her in, and they both cause a hush as they make their way through the car. There are a lot of uncomfortable glances towards the girl.

“Where’s Riyo?” Emerald says.

“She went towards the front,” Ravi says. “She was trying to talk to the night warden.”

“Ooh,” Vale says. “He’s a weirdo. Strong, too.”

“You saw him?”

“Yeah. He saw me, too. Only just got away.” She turns to show off her new scar. “His sword hurt me.”

“Um,” Emerald says, nodding towards Guinevere, who is staring at the bird man talking to himself with wide, frightened eyes.

“Oh, sorry,” Ravi says, glancing around before focusing on Guinevere. “I was talking to my imaginary friend. She met the night warden earlier. She says he’s strong.”

“Also,” Glitter says, making Guinevere jump and hide behind Emerald’s leg, “we met a strange lady who could turn invisible, but I don’t think she was imaginary.”

Raith cocks her head, then turns to look around the dining car. “Damn. He’s not here.”

“Who?” Emerald says.

“The, uh, apprentice we met earlier. That woman sounds like she might be his master. Either that or she’s the person responsible for our, er, investigation.” She keeps glancing down at Guinevere. “Ravi. There’s a ginger-haired man lurking about somewhere who’s part of the… well, he’s a member of a guild in Ragg. He’s really easy to spot. If he comes back here, tell him about this invisible lady.”

“Um, okay,” Ravi says. “What are you going to do?”

“We need to find Riyo. She’s going to want to meet Guinevere Copperwright here,” she invests the name with as much import as she can.

“Oh,” Ravi breathes. His eyes harden.

“You mean-” Glitter says, but Ravi raps his knuckles on his chassis, and he sputters to a stop.

“Dead guy’s kid, huh?” Vale says, but fortunately Guinevere cannot hear her.

“Right,” Emerald says. “I need you to look after her for a little while. The cars may be moving around, but the engine has to stay at the front, so the sergeant and I are going to cheat.”

“Where are you going?” Guinevere says.

Emerald kneels before her and puts a delicate hand on her shoulder. “I’m going to get my friend so she can help me find your mother.” She turns Guinevere around. “This is Ravi and Glitter.”

“Hello,” Ravi says.

“Hi!” Glitter draws a smiley face on his glass.

“They’re my friends too. Will you stay with them until I come back?”

Guinevere’s hand reaches up to her shoulder and grips one of Emerald’s fingers. She is shaking.

“I promise I won’t be long,” Emerald says quietly.

Guinevere nods and lets go.

“Um. Hello. My name is Guinevere.”

Nice to meet you, Guinevere,” Ravi says. “That’s a nice necklace.”

The girl perks up at the mention of her dragonscale, and she lifts it up to show Ravi. “It’s from a gold dragon! Emerald says it’s really rare!”

“I bet,” Ravi says, taking a seat to help put the girl at ease. “I met a lot of dragons in Emerald’s homeland, but none of them were gold.”

Emerald smiles at Ravi over Guinevere’s head, then turns to Raith. “Ready?”

“More than,” she says, and her eye gleams red. “These bastards have a lot to answer for.”

Emerald nods and heads for the end of the bar. To the side, not far from the staff entrance to the kitchen, is another door that opens out onto the desert night.

“Um, excuse me?” one of the bar staff says as Emerald reaches for it.

Raith turns to the woman, who flinches from her gaze. She holds up her World Force badge. “This is important, ma’am.”

“But we can’t unlock the door while the train is moving. It’s-”

Emerald squeezes the latch between her claws and cuts through it with a squeak of tearing metal.

“-dangerous.”

“I think we’ll be fine,” Emerald says. She yanks the door aside and leaps from the train. The sound of her wings slamming down against the night air rushes against the outside of the train, and then she is gliding alongside the dining car. Guinevere lets out a delighted laugh and runs to the window to wave. Emerald smiles and waves back.

Raith Ixel is a vampire. Some people don’t take well to learning that, but circumstances have once again forced her hand. The onset of night has restored her strength to her, so as she steps from the train, darkness engulfs her. Shadows etched with blood-red energy form thin, crooked wings that sprout from her shoulders. They beat in silence, lifting her up alongside Emerald. The two of them share another nod and they push against the wind towards the front of the train.

The coal car precedes the engine, open to the night, allowing them to come down right at the door to the boiler room. A heavyset guard stands before it, bald head glittering in the light of the Resplendence. His eyes flicker with surprise as Raith lands before him, red glare piercing his skin and making him conscious of the blood in his veins.

“I need to speak to your boss,” she says, and the parting of her lips reveals her fangs, long and sharp.

“Th-the engine is off lim-”

Raith’s eye narrows, and the man blinks a few times before his eyes roll back and he slumps back against the door. A grizzly snore escapes his throat as he falls. Emerald glides in and lands beside her, and they shove their way into the boiler room, claws and fangs bared.

And stop dead.

The boiler room is lit by a couple of mana gems at each end, but mostly by the ambient flicker of the furnace itself, hot red light warming the austere steel walls and floor. Pipes and valves fill much of the space and nestled by one of them are two figures.

Riyo is straddling the lamia’s tail, pressing her upper body against the wall. One hand is tangled in her pastel pink hair, the other slides beneath her vest. Their mouths are pressed together, their eyes closed in consummate bliss.

Emerald clears her throat carefully. “Riyo?”

It’s still a handful of seconds before the kiss breaks and Riyo looks round at them.

“Oh. Hey guys. What are you doing here?”

The lamia is looking away, an embarrassed flush lighting up her cheeks.

“We’re trying to find a murderer,” Emerald says. She feels her pilot flare in her throat. “What are you doing?”

“Oh! Yeah. I, uh, kinda got distracted.” She turns back to the lamia and begins kissing her neck, making her gasp.

“Riyo!” Emerald takes a step forward. “The man who was killed has a daughter. She’s seven.”

“Oh? Yeah?” Riyo says, not looking round.

Emerald growls and takes another step, but Raith puts a hand on her shoulder.

“This is bad,” she says.

“Yeah. I thought I knew Riyo.”

“You do. She’s not herself right now. That woman’s a lamia.”

“Huh? Yeah, I’ve heard of them.”

Raith shakes her head. “Vampires can hypnotise people. We stare into their eyes and pit our will against theirs. Usually the vampire wins, and the victim falls asleep. Makes them easier to drink from.”

Emerald frowns. “That’s creepy.”

“Yeah, I know. I can’t help being who I am, though, and it’s certainly useful for getting people out of my way without tearing their throats out.”

“Fair.”

“But lamia don’t hypnotise. They charm. Just being around them will draw your attention to them, lower your guard. And if they focus on you then you fall deeply, truly in love with them. Past the point of reason. You’d do anything for them. You’d die for them.”

“Ah, Riyo,” Avril says, flustered. “We have company.”

“It’s okay, I know them.”

“They’re looking at me with scary eyes, Riyo.”

Riyo turns a scowl on them. “Guys! You’re making her uncomfortable.”

“Riyo,” Emerald says, “the train staff killed a man in cold blood. They’ve taken a woman prisoner and taken a father from his daughter. We have to make sure they pay for it.”

“Avril’s not like them,” Riyo says. “Do whatever you’ve gotta do, but leave her out of this.”

“They’re lying,” Avril says. She’s cute even when she’s angry, and though she rises a little on her tail she isn’t imposing. Compared to the dragon and vampire facing them, she looks fragile. Vulnerable. “My friends aren’t like that.”

“You’re hurting her feelings,” Riyo says, balling her hands into fists.

“Emerald…” Raith says, looking between the two of them.

“I don’t care. She’s twisted your mind around and she’s helping them get away with hurting Guinevere.” She takes a step forward. “If you’re not going to be any use to us then get out of the way.”

“Riyo…” Avril whispers. There is such fear in her eyes.

Riyo puts herself between Emerald and Avril. “Gravity Mould.”

“You’re really going to fight me?” Emerald growls. “For her?”

“I won’t let anyone hurt her.”

“Riyo,” Avril says, and it’s like a shot in her gut. The quiver in her voice makes her whole body tense. Makes the rage bubble up until her jaw starts to ache. “Help me.”

Riyo’s hand flies out and her reality forms a corridor down the carriage. The earth reaches up for her friends and grabs them.

Emerald braces, but she finds herself flat on her belly all the same, her wings splayed painfully across the floor. Raith falls beside her, unable to even grunt with surprise at the pressure falling down upon them. The train groans as its wheels press into the tracks.

“Shit,” Emerald breathes. “She’s not holding back.” Her next gasped breath pulls her pilot down her throat.

“Then we can’t either,” Raith groans. Black flame rises around her, cracked with blood. It is joined by a wash of pink, and both dragon and vampire rise slowly, power washing off them. They look past Riyo’s glare to the smirking lamia.

“You have no idea what you’ve done,” Emerald tells her.

“Get them away from me, Riyo,” she says, barely hiding her contempt.

“We need to get her off the train,” Raith says. “She’ll derail it.”

The dragonclaw sword spins up from the corner of the room where she left it and into her hand.

“She’s not going to make that easy,” Emerald says. She glares past Riyo at the lamia. “Keep her busy for a couple of seconds.”

Raith raises her arm and blood lightning sings over her cuffs. Riyo’s eyes snap to the action, but she’s just testing the pressure on her. Even empowered by her glamour, she doesn’t think she can wade through the gravitational blanket that presses down upon her quickly enough to get close. She decides on a different tack. Each step she takes towards Riyo is measured. Even. The crafter narrows her eyes and lunges.

Raith gets her hand in the way of the point of her sword, which digs into her palm with a sweet, stinging pain that electrifies her. The punch she throws in return is vicious and precise, but Riyo has already let go of her sword. Light and heat press into her side as Emerald breathes at the lamia and a spear of flame rushes across the carriage, reflection shining in the width of her eyes.

Riyo’s knee hits Raith in the side, and the weight of it cracks her teeth together, pitches her down the carriage. The beam of light turns in the air and drives back towards her.

Emerald blinks as her flame engulfs Raith, then her father’s memento is spinning at her face. With a roar she slams it aside and swings her tail into Riyo’s path. Riyo’s weight shifts and she vaults over it like a gymnast, rolling into a kick that hits Emerald in the belly with the force of an asteroid. She is slammed back into the door, its steel face warping with the impact. The train shudders on the rails, and Avril’s soft laughter tinkles through the boiler room.

Raith bursts from the flame, her clothes a ruin of holes and char. Her blistered skin bubbles with crackling shadows as her injuries heal. Her foot crashes into the lamia’s shovel, but she’s off-balance and crashes into the wall of with a pained cry. Raith’s other foot touches down as Emerald looses a diffuse ball of flame that enshrouds both her and Riyo, hiding the other end of the room from them. Raith drives forward after Avril, grabbing her by the throat with one hand and slamming the other into the dented wall. The steel shatters, and the sweltering air of the furnace meets the chill of the night as they tumble to the sand.

Raith takes the handle of a shovel to the gut and rolls back, pushing up in time to see another hole appear in the side of the cab. Emerald hits the sand like an avalanche, sending a geyser of grains billowing up into the wind. The train rattles past, carriages a violet blur as the Resplendence beams down upon them. Riyo Falsemoon stands with it at her back, her face a massacre waiting to happen. She flicks her wrists and three daggers fly out of each of her sleeves, falling perfectly still in the air above her shoulders. The dragonclaw sword spins out of the gloom and into her waiting hand.

“Get. The fuck. Away from her,” she says, and the wind stops.

“That’s step one,” Emerald groans, rising to her knees and spitting a glob of burning blood onto the sand. “Now we stop her before she kills herself.”

Raith looks down at her suit, looks at the smear of blood on her palm where her injury has closed.

“That’s all, huh?”

“What was that?” Guinevere says, staring around as the train rattles.

“Maybe an earthquake?” Ginger suggests.

“Uh, yeah,” Ravi says. “Probably that.”

“Really?” Glitter says. “I thought it might be-”

Ravi raps on his side again, ringing him like a bell.

“Oh. Oh! An earthquake. Yes! We had lots of those where I used to live.” He piles some snow on the table in front of him, forming a craggy mountain. It begins to shake, and little avalanches slide their way down its sides. On one of them, a tiny Riyo Flasemoon surfs on a tiny Glitter. Guinevere claps as the figures reach the bottom.

“So you’re friends of the sergeant?” Ginger says.

“That’s right. And you’re a member of, uh, a certain guild?”

He nods. “I’m an assassin, yes.”

Ravi cringes.

“What’s an assassassassin?” Guinevere asks.

“They’re like ninjas,” Ravi says, glaring at the ginger ninja.

Guinevere looks at Ginger. A single eyebrow slowly rises.

“I’m still in training,” he says, blushing.

“The sergeant told me you might know an invisible woman with silver hair.”

“Yes! That’s my master, Frostbite. I’ve been looking everywhere for her.”

“Even though you knew she could turn invisible at will?”

“Uh. That’s a good point, actually. Where did you see her?”

Vale rolls her eyes and flicks the inept assassin’s ear. He neither sees nor feels it.

“Right here. But then she vanished again. She said I was poisoned by something called a ‘wither’. Do you know anything about that?”

“I’m afraid not,” Ginger says with a shake of his head. “But if she’s hunting it down then it doesn’t stand a chance. Frostbite is the best there is.”

“My ears are burning,” Frostbite says.

A cacophony of startled yelps bursts from the table and floats away over the dining car. Frostbite is sitting between Ginger and Glitter, leaning over the table with her chin propped up in her hand. Wrinkles crease the corners of her eyes and her forehead, but her silver hair is more gossamer than wire.

“So you’re a seer,” she says, glancing past Ravi at Vale. “Good for you.”

“You can see me?” Vale says.

“Hear you, too. You should be more careful with that blabbing mouth of yours.”

Vale’s lips make a fine line as she glares at the woman, but she just looks away.

“Anyway,” she says to Ravi, “your friends have done me a favour, so I thought I’d do one for you.”

“Huh?” Glitter says.

“The dragon and the vampire. They took the lamia off the train. That leaves the crafter, the Nighteye, the wither and the night warden himself as credible threats.”

“Surely none of them can touch you?” Ginger says. “You’re the best!”

Frostbite cocks a smile, then raps Ginger on the top of the head with her knuckles. Even the soft rebuke is so quick that Ravi can barely see it. Ginger doesn’t stand a chance, and flinches back, almost falling off his chair.

“I’m good, but you don’t stay good by getting cocky and taking bad odds. This wither is old. Experienced. It’s staying a step ahead of me, and it’s working for the night warden rather than the other way around. That tells us something. The Nighteye can see through even me, and the lamia… Well.” A shimmer of cold silver flickers up Frostbite’s cloak, and as it flashes over her face, Ravi is sure he can see her skull through her skin. A shiver crawls up the back of his neck, tickling his feathers. “Love is a more powerful force than even death itself.”

“So what do we do?” he says.

“You?” She smirks. “You get thrown in the caboose.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll look after the girl.”

“Wait… but-”

“There,” someone says, and a silence begins to emanate from the end of the carriage, reaching past the bar and amongst the tables. Frostbite is gone, as though she was never there. Uther stands in the door, several grim-looking guards in night-staff uniforms flanking him. A woman with thick eyebrows and a loosening braid in her hair stands behind one of the guards, her stark blue eyes focused on their table.

“Mummy!” Guinevere shouts, shoving the silence even further down the car.

Tears in her eyes, Angela Copperwright moves towards her daughter. The guard blocks her with his arm, and she lets out a soft sob. Guinevere hops down from her seat to run to her mother, but Ravi puts a hand on her shoulder and pulls her up short.

“Hang on a moment, Guinevere,” he says.

“I am afraid I will have to ask you to come with me,” Uther says. His eyes are still shadowed, but his smirk is directed at Ravi.

“Why?” Ravi says.

“You are a danger to this train.”

“To your evil plans, you mean,” Glitter says.

“The night warden is responsible for running this train,” Uther says, his smirk fading. “His word is law. He has the right to take action to ensure that there is no danger or delay to its paying passengers. He acts in the interest of their safety. If you have any regard for them,” he glances towards Guinevere and his smirk returns, “you will come peacefully and accept confinement until we arrive in Horologium.”

The guard beside Angela puts his other hand on the hilt of his blade, his stubbled face resolute, eyes fixed on Ravi’s.

Ravi snarls, clenches his fist.

“She’ll come through on her promise,” Ginger says, quietly enough that Uther and his lackeys cannot hear.

“I’ll watch over her too,” Vale says.

Ravi closes his eyes for a moment, then lets his anger drain away before it drives him to stupidity. He gives Guinevere’s shoulder a gentle squeeze.

“Go to your mother,” he says.

She looks up at him, infected by the uncertainty in the rest of them. Even in the innocence of youth, she sees the tension between the two groups. The pull towards her mother wins out and she nods, hurrying over to Angela and hugging her around her legs. Angela strokes her hair, her eyes closed and still spilling tears down her cheeks.

“Take them to the front,” Uther says to the guard, and the two of them are led through the door into the next carriage. Vale saunters after them, black eyes wary as she passes Uther. He doesn’t glance towards her, though. Guinevere looks over her shoulder at Ravi before the door closes.

A few moments pass before Uther says, “Follow me.”

Ravi nods to Glitter and Ginger. They pass into the next car where a contingent of nearly a dozen guards are waiting. Another follows them in, leading Doctor Mildjum. His spectacles are askew, and he wavers with each step. His nose and cheeks are rosy above his uncertain smile.

“A pleasant gathering,” he slurs. “Where are we going?”

The guard just shoves him again, and they are marched to the end of the empty carriage and to the next door. The smell of blood and oil pervades the carriage that follows. Twice again the number of guards that accompany them lie strewn across the barren metal floor, some groaning, some still.

Rolleck the Lost spins on his heel at the sound of the door, red eye flashing as he takes them all in and immediately lunges for Uther. The crafter raises his hand, and then he is gone. In his place is Elemus Fetch, and his daggers twist Rolleck’s blade aside as though Riyo is manipulating its gravity. He rolls out of the attack before the scalpel-sharp blades can draw another red line on his body and add to the blood soaking into his shirt.

“Rolleck!” Ravi says stepping through into the carriage and reaching for a dagger.

One of the guards grabs him and shoves him hard, sending him stumbling into Glitter. The rest of the guards move towards the door, blocking them. Snow drips from Glitter’s shoulders and he draws a mean face on his glass, eyebrows downturned.

“Think of the girl,” Uther says, now at the other end of Rolleck’s carriage. He has a leather-bound tome in his hand, its cover embossed with golden lettering that declare it to be Volume Five. On the page in front of him is a glittering, opalescent stone that glows with cursed mana.

Rolleck is back on his feet, the song of his blade so loud in his ears that he barely registers the change in circumstances beyond what it means for the fight. He ignores the guards and approaches Elemus once more. Barbs dig into his muscles and the voice in his head laughs as he circles around away from the new threat posed by the crafter. He is once again drawn to the man’s eyes. They seem to gleam and shift like the Resplendence, aware of everything and nothing. The moment Rolleck decides to move, they flash, and Elemus moves with him. The counter is perfect, once again, and the voice’s laughter grows louder as he is pitched past his opponent towards the guards at the door.

“Rolleck!” Ravi shouts, but by the time he has twisted round it is too late. Uther now stands where Elemus had, holding the mana gem in his hand. He crushes it, and a wave of force blasts out. It seems to grip Rolleck in its power and drive him through the door, scattering the guards like bowling pins. Ravi dives, but Glitter isn’t fast enough. He topples over backwards with the impact of Rolleck hitting him.

Ravi slips his bow from his shoulder and draws an arrow to his cheek, pointing it at Elemus, who now stands in the doorway. His aim is true, but the image of Guinevere walking away with her mother stays his hand. Rolleck’s dizziness flashes to memory and he springs from Glitter to the wall. His sword crashes out into the night, linking the inside of the carriage to the outside.

“That won’t help you this time,” Elemus says with a smirk. His daggers flash into their sheaths and he grips a lever by the door, then heaves it down. A mechanical crunch rings through the carriage and, as the seconds pass in uncomprehending silence, Elemus slowly begins to move away.

“He’s disconnected the cars!” Glitter yelps, snow piling up and shoving him to his feet.

“What?” One of the guards says. He turns and runs for the door, but a stretch of flickering sand and sleepers gapes beneath him.

“The Sultan’s will is law,” Elemus says, nudging his spectacles back up his nose. “He wishes these pests removed. Hold them here until the cleaner comes.”

The guard’s face turns deathly pale, but he nods and turns away from the growing chasm between the two cars. He draws his sword and yells, “For the Sultan!”

Riyo’s nose is bleeding. It’s just a smudge of red on her upper lip, but it means she’s in danger. Emerald knows this, but just staying alive is almost too much for her to manage right now, let alone saving her friend. Without having to worry for her own safety, Riyo is relentless. She moves like an insect, flitting from side to side in a manner impossible to follow, much less hit, and her sword cleaves like it’s folding the world in half. All the while she drives Emerald towards the sand, a constant, furious pressure that she must fight alongside Riyo. Knives dance around Avril, shooting like arrows when Raith tries to get close to her. The lamia herself is no slouch, either. She wields her coal shovel like a warhammer, and she is more than strong enough to break bones with it.

Emerald winces as her flame-wreathed fist meets her father’s claw again. Her knuckles are a mess of burning blood and shattered scales, but anything less than the full force of her cowl would mean the loss of her hand.

“Riyo!” she roars, flame escaping her throat in a cascade of pink twinkling embers. She grabs the sword with her other hand, but Riyo has already released it. Emerald digs her claws into the sand and the scales of her feet burst with a rush of fire. The sand flashes to molten glass around her, but Riyo’s kick is every bit as powerful as the previous one. Emerald grits her teeth and grabs for Riyo’s ankle, but like a burst of light she is gone again, and Emerald finds herself streaming through the air, clutching a monstrously heavy sword. She rights herself with her wings as she slows and clutches at her ribs with her other hand, her breaths coming fast and hot. Her cowl won’t last much longer.

Raith is getting used to the knives. They move faster than she can track, but Riyo is pushing her power to its limit. Even without a care for her own health, it can’t be easy for her to control all these individual entities, and the knives are the least important part of her arsenal. They fly in straight lines, then stop and spin in place before shooting off again. They are arrayed around her so that she cannot see them all at once, and Riyo has been very good at unleashing the ones behind her. Too good, in fact. As long as Raith remembers where they last were, she can anticipate their activation as soon as her back is to them. This lets her avoid them. The snag is that the moment she gets anywhere near the lamia, all the knives move at once in a blinding field of steel that drives her back and puts her at risk of being hit with a shovel.

“Emerald,” she shouts. “All-in.”

She streaks at the lamia as Emerald unleashes a massive fireball. The knives flicker into overdrive, the first coming from behind as usual. She shifts enough that it won’t hit her heart, but slams into her back and through her chest. She slaps her hand over its exit trajectory, black flame bursting from her skin and catching the knife in her palm. Pain wracks her as the other knives find marks on her body, but she clutches the one in her hand and drives forward. Avril is ready for her. The blade of her shovel flashes with heat as it meets her fist, then her tail lashes across Ratih’s abdomen and drives her back, panting. Her injuries are healing slower, now.

Avril screams. The hilt of Riyo’s knife sticks out between the scales of her tail. Stark crimson flows freely over autumn orange and Riyo’s head whips around, eyes hard with hatred. She vanishes, and Raith barely get her arms up before Riyo’s foot slams down on her. The sand around them leaps into the air, and Raith feels the strain in her ankles as she is driven towards the centre of Valos. One of her arms breaks with a crack that sends lightning arcing throughout her body. Another knife whips into her hand as she rolls over Raith’s guard. She just manages to move her head so that the blade comes down hard into her shoulder instead of her skull. She grabs Riyo by the front of her shirt and wreaths herself in power, holding to the fabric with a vice grip.

Emerald falls with the airborne sand, landing behind Riyo as the knife rises again. She grabs her friend by the wrist, and Raith sees the skin begin to blister as scales press against Riyo’s skin. They are caught in tableau, muscles straining against reality to hold Riyo still. Her jaw is clenched, her eyes filled with empty anger.

“Stop, Riyo,” Emerald says. It’s a whisper that seems to cut through the air like a blade of ice. “You don’t love her.”

For a moment, Riyo’s struggle falters.

“She is… everything.”

“Is she? Whose kingdom did you save? Whose curse did you break? Whose monster did you slay? Whose purpose did you restore?” Slowly, Emerald releases her grip on Riyo’s wrist. She doesn’t move. “Do you love her?” She places a hand on Riyo’s shoulder, and this time it does not burn. She turns her so she is facing Emerald. “Or do you love us? Your friends?”

Riyo blinks. Her head hurts. There is blood on her. Hers and her friends. That isn’t right.

“Emerald?” she says.

“I’m here.”

She looks down at the blade in her hand. She closes her eyes and lets it fall to the ground. Her reality closes, letting sand, stone and steel return to Valos. The pain in her head echoes out over the desert, and Avril screams again. She ignores it.

“I do love you, Emerald,” she says quietly. “Can… can you forgive me?”

Emerald steps forward and hugs her. “Love makes you do crazy things, Riyo. I wouldn’t still be here if I couldn’t forgive something as small as this.”

Riyo smiles and swipes away a tear. “Thanks.”

“What do we do about her?” Raith says, jerking her thumb towards the lamia.

Riyo turns to face her. Meets the soft embers of her eyes. Her heart jumps. Tugs her towards Avril’s beauty.

“Stop them, Riyo,” she says, the edge of pain in her voice a lead weight in Riyo’s stomach. “They mean to hurt me.”

Riyo takes a step, then gives her head a vigorous shake. “No. No they don’t. They’re my friends, and if I ask them not to, they won’t hurt you.”

“Uh, are you sure?” Raith asks.

“Yes,” Riyo says.

“Then… then I’ll-” She stops, jolted with fear, as Riyo’s reality opens. She finds herself caught in place, unable to move. Unable even to blink.

Riyo walks forward until she stands before the lamia, looking up at her with a blue gaze that promises both the depths of her passion and the apex of her fury.

“If you want me to love you,” she says, cold and quiet, “then do it properly.”

The pressure falls away, and Avril slumps to the ground. The sand bites into her palms as she looks up. Riyo parts her bangs and kisses her softly on the forehead, then turns to her friends.

“We need to catch up.”

“That’s going to be difficult,” Emerald says. Her cowl has flickered out, and now her entire body aches. Her wings feel like masses of stone.

“Yeah,” Raith says. Her glamour burns away, leaving her rumpled uniform and unkempt hair. The hole in her shoulder still froths with black smoke and blood lightning as it heals. “We’re not flying for a while.”

“I guess we walk, then,” Riyo says.

“Um,” Raith says. “I hate to ask, but…”

Riyo turns to look at her, then blinks. “Oh. Yeah, okay. I owe you that much, at least. Thank you for helping me, Raith.”

“Ah, no, don’t mention it.” She leans in and delicately bites into Riyo’s neck. Hot blood washes over her tongue and it feels as though she has never drunk before this moment. Elation floods her and flows through into Riyo, too.

Avril stares at them, heat coming into her cheeks at Riyo’s expression. “Oh,” she says softly.

Gordon Toddledown was once a proud knight. He served for nearly thirty years protecting his kingdom, but when it was overthrown, he fled. On the very train he and his family had ridden to safety, he’d been offered a job. He’d known the Sultan of the Rails was a cruel, greedy man, but for the most part that meant there were simply no problems on his trains. He hadn’t considered, then, that he might be expected to give his life for the Sultan’s profits.

He has now seen the Sultan’s cruelty in action, so he only has himself to blame that he is now encased up to the neck in ice on an abandoned carriage in the middle of the desert.

“What now?” the metal box says, drawing a frowning face on his glass.

“I suppose we need to catch up with the train,” the swordsman says.

“We’re not going to catch it walking,” the bird-man says.

“I’m not sure what other choice we have,” the swordsman replies. He is staring out of the door into the night, watching the tracks disappear off into the distance.

“The assassin said Emerald and Sergeant Ixel fell off the train too. Maybe they’ll catch up once they’ve dealt with the lamia?”

“Even if they do, it’s not as though they can carry us all. No offense, Glitter.”

“I am quite heavy,” the box says. It settles to the ground, retracting its spindly legs. Its glass mists up, then shapes and notations begin appearing. A softly-whistled tune fills the carriage.

“We can’t stay here,” Gordon says. The desert air catches in his dry throat, but when he swallows, nothing changes. “At least get us off the tracks.”

“Huh?” Ravi says.

“We have to get off the tracks before the cleaner comes.”

“Cleaner?”

“The rails have to be kept clear,” Gordon says, glancing towards the door at the back of the carriage. “The cleaners come through between each service and clear anything blocking the tracks.”

“Oh. Well, maybe they can help us, then.”

“No.” Despite the ice, Gordon feels sweat beading on his brow. “You don’t understand. They clear the tracks. That’s all they do.”

Ravi frowns. “I don’t think I do understand.” The agitation on the guard’s face is making him think his fears are founded in something truly terrifying, though. “Maybe we should get off, though. Just in case?”

Rolleck matches his frown, then they both turn to Glitter.

His whistling trails away. “I think,” he says slowly, “that we can catch up.” The incomprehensible scribbles on his screen fade away, and he draws on a grin. “I have a plan.”

Gordon looks from the box to the other two. “If the cleaner catches up with us, we’ll die. We’ll all die.”

Ravi raises an eyebrow and turns to another of the guards. “Is that true?”

The questioned guard swallows. “I… Carriages, even whole trains, have gone missing. No sign of them left. Protesters have barricaded the tracks to no effect. There are so many stories… There’s something that cleans the tracks, but nobody’s ever seen it. The cleaners… They’re real.”

“We won’t be here when whatever it is arrives,” Glitter says cheerily. “Rolleck, I need you to cut up the walls.”

“I think I’m ready to fly again,” Emerald says. Every muscle in her body complains at the very thought of it, but the anguish of scorched blood vessels has faded.

“Do you think we can catch up to the train?” Riyo says.

Emerald shrugs. “It moves pretty fast, but we might get to Horologium while it’s still in the station.”

“Tch. That won’t help us catch the killer.”

“I don’t mean to point fingers,” Raith says, “but…”

“Yeah, I know. My fault.” Riyo bites her thumb.

“Not really,” Emerald says. “It’s her fault.”

“Nah. I should have been stronger.”

“What are we going to do about her, by the way?” Raith glances over her shoulder. Avril the lamia trails them, perhaps fifty metres behind. She turns her gaze to the ground when she notices Raith looking, but she continues following them. Her tail flicks from side to side and leaves a writhing pattern in the sand.

Riyo stops and turns to face Avril. “Hey!”

She twitches, then looks up at them through her bangs.

“We’re going to try and catch up with the train. Hurry up.”

“Huh?” Emerald says.

“Well we can’t just leave her in the middle of the desert.”

“We absolutely can.”

“Nuh uh. Raith, can you carry her if I negate her weight?”

Raith sighs. “I suppose so, yes.”

“Are you serious?” Emerald says.

Raith touches her collar. “The Writ says we all come from the same place. That we’re all one. To perpetrate cruelty against someone is to be cruel to yourself.”

“Huh. And what about all the fighting you’ve done?”

“Fighting is different,” Rath says, turning her serious red eyes to Emerald’s amber. “A fight is a contest of wills against one another. The pain of conflict is already shared between combatants. Cruelty is inherently unequal, so the balance comes back in different ways.”

“Somewhere down the road,” Riyo says with a nod. “I like that.”

Avril shuffles up to them, eyes downcast. “The train is long gone.” Her voice is so demure it is almost inaudible. “I don’t think you will catch it before it reaches Horologium.”

“All we can do is try,” Riyo says. “No funny business while we’re flying.”

“I… Of course. You broke my charm. There is no more I can do to you.”

Riyo opens her reality and negates their weight. Raith’s shadowy wings roll from her shoulders with a burst of bloody static, and they are soon airborne, streaming beneath the resplendence with the black iron of the rails their unwavering guide.

“Huh?” Riyo says. “We just flew over something on the rails.”

Avril shudders. “It was a cleaner. Leave it be.”

“Cleaner?”

“They keep the tracks clear. That’s all I know. All anybody except the Sultan knows.”

“It was a single person on a cart,” Raith says. “She looked… strange.”

Riyo’s eyes weren’t good enough to make that out, but she feels them. Feels their disquieting aura. It touches her in the same way the Darkness did, and she swallows and falls silent.

Their flight is chilly, but Riyo does not want to waste her energy diverting the wind away from them. She may be called upon to fight again before the train arrives, and the soft throb of her brain tells her she is still too close on the heels of the previous fight to push herself. Avril makes no complaints despite her relatively thin vest. She simply watches the sands flow by below them. Every now and again she glances at Riyo, but quickly looks away again.

“There’s something else,” Raith says.

“A blue light,” Emerald says, a smile in her voice.

“Glitter!” Riyo yells as they swoop down.

They land on an open train carriage. The walls have been jaggedly cut down and the floor is littered with scraps of metal. A group of blue-clad night-shift guards sit at the back, shivering in their damp uniforms. They keep glancing out of the portal where the door used to be. Towards the front of the carriage, two holes have been cut into the floor. A cluster of gears and rods emerges from each, their mechanisms reaching out towards a large gear attached to Glitter’s back. His glow is a beacon in the desert night as he spins the gear.

“I’m a train!” he says, then lets out a long, low whistle.

“That’s awesome!” Riyo says.

“We’re not going fast enough, though.” His voice drops, then perks up again. “But with you and Emerald…”

The carriage shudders, then the gears unlink from Glitter and they roll to a stop. He spins around with a whoosh of arctic air, his glass already fading to grey-white with condensation and frost. Plans begin to appear in traced angles and tightly-written notes.

“We can’t stop,” one of the guards yells from the back of the car. “Can’t you feel it?”

“There is something back there,” Raith says. “Something horrible.”

“We’ve got time,” Riyo says, following their worried gazes back down the empty rails. “What do we need to do, Glitter? I’m pretty worn out.”

“That’s okay! We need fans!”

They set to work at Glitter’s instruction, tearing down more of the walls until the carriage is little more than a platform with wheels. In short order, a section of metal from the roof is bent into a tube and filled with fans, welded into existence with precision blasts of pink flame. The last of the walls are moulded into a large tank to which the pipe is attached. They cut two more holes into the floor and create another array of gears attached to the wheels.

As they work, the tension grows. The captive guards mutter and mumble, watching the darkness behind and shuddering against a cold just as much imagined as truly felt. Dread flows across the desert and builds into a wave that reaches up above them, threatening to crash down and wipe the rails clean of everything.

Glitter packs snow into the tank, dredging every molecule of liquid from the dry desert air and sapping it of its energy.

“We have to go,” Gordon Toddledown yammers, his body shaking. “It’s here.”

Raith looks up first, and her pale skin blanches further. Riyo rushes to the back of the car and squints out into the night as silence falls, heavy enough to drag wind to earth. A constant, uncomfortable squeak of a wheel turning rises and draws the cleaner into sight.

“What… what is she?” Ravi says.

“She’s an orc,” Raith says. “But…”

“Now, Emerald,” Glitter says. He can feel the energy behind them warping strangely, now.

Emerald seals the tank, then takes a step back. With a glance over her shoulder for the miasma of empty power that follows, she breathes, wreathing the tank in flame. Water begins to boil. Steam flows past turbines, which begin to spin.

The orc is tall. As tall as Emerald. Her skin is olive green, her hair as black as midnight. Her crimson ball gown flutters around her legs in a soft wind that floats grains of sand across the track before her. Grains which simply vanish. Her left eye is russet red, staring forward, devoid of life. Her right is too big, too round. Ringed with a haze of violet that almost matches the Resplendence, it contains a void so deep and empty that the entire world could fall into it without so much as a whisper. Cracks of black nothingness run through her skin all down the right side of her body.

“Word shelter us,” one of the guards whispers as time starts moving again. Steam bursts from the end of the tube and Glitter snatches it into his body, taking its energy and turning it back to water before rushing it back towards the tank. The wheels of the car grind the tracks, and they begin to move.

Another guard grabs a hunk of leftover metal from the ground, panic in his eyes.

“No!” Riyo says.

He hefts the metal as if to throw it.

The carriage begins to pick up speed. Emerald holds her flame steady on the tank while Glitter feeds it snow to boil.

Everyone else stares at the spot where the guard was. No sign remains that he ever existed.

The orc’s cart continues to roll forward, implacable. Their makeshift steam engine pulls them away from her, gears whizzing to a blur. The sound of groaning metal overtakes them, and as the cleaner fades into the darkness it feels as though they can breathe again.

“That was disquieting,” Rolleck says. Sword and voice both are deathly silent.

“It almost felt familiar,” Riyo says, staring at the tracks as if the cleaner is still there. She turns towards Avril, who is making herself as small as possible. “Who exactly is the Sultan of the Rails?”

“He is just a man. I have seen him. He is ambitious, greedy, but just a man.”

They are still gaining speed, and the air that rushes past them is laden with sand. They all hunker down as best they can to avoid being pelted.

“How fast can we go?” Ravi yells over the roar of the wind.

“Very,” Glitter says. He sounds distracted. “We aren’t limited by the weight of the train. Or by the need for the engine to survive the journey.”

Riyo’s stomach feels as though it is sinking into the ground. The sound of the tracks and wheels is a cacophony of clashing steel, while the violet-tinted dunes flash by them in a mirage haze.

“How do we slow down, Glitter?” Raith calls from the front.

“Uhhh…”

“You could at least stop making us go faster,” Rolleck says.

“I can design a brake,” Glitter says, letting the steam wisp away behind them. He begins calculating friction and velocity on his glass.

“I think it might be too late for that,” Raith says. A blip in the distance is fast becoming the back end of a train. It grows in their focus like the sun climbing higher in the sky.

“We’re going over the top,” Riyo says, narrowing her eyes into the wind. “Ravi, keep the first three cars where they are then find the girl and her mother. Glitter, Emerald, stay with the doctor and the ninja and make sure the passengers are safe. Raith, Rolleck, stay with me. We’re going to talk to the night warden.”

Everyone nods. The distance closes with the chatter of wheels and the grinding of gears.

“Um,” Gordon Toddledown says.

Then the broken car hits its former partner, and everything shifts forward. The guards roll, slump and slide, sloughing discarded chunks of train from their paths. Riyo tilts the world and, as the bolt that holds the cars together freezes into place, she and her friends are catapulted up over the train. The yells of fear and confusion reach them through open windows, but everybody’s eyes are turned backwards as they glide overhead. Only Emerald remains behind, bracing against the impact with wings outstretched, her claws hooked into the clothing of Ginger and Dr. Mildjum.

Ravi pulls a triad of arrows to his cheek. His cursebreaker rolls through his feathers and over his bowstring, imparting his power to cold steel and smooth wood. They arc over the train and curl back against the wind, slamming down into the first three cars, each in its centre. The arrows join outside to in and lock them there with curls of blue lightning.

They land half-way down the train and sprint for the front, Raith and Ravi pulling ahead.

“Find the girl and her mother,” Ravi tells Vale, and the ghost nods. She looks at the floor for a moment, face bent in concentration. Then she yelps and falls through into the carriage. Ravi jumps a few more cars then drops into a gap, his knife clearing its sheath just as the door before him opens. The carriage in front of him is lined with beds that bunk four high, all with curtains across them. Batons and blue uniforms hang beside many of them, and that is all Ravi notices before the night-shift guard in front of him yells and swings his baton.

Glitter stops on top of the dining car, letting his frozen leg-extensions melt away. He extends his awareness down through the metal to find a room full of anxious bodies. His crystal spins, and the metal beneath him grows cold. Brittle. He sees Vale slip through the floor and, a moment later, does the same thing. Iron cracks beneath his weight, and a chorus of fearful screams greets his arrival in the dining car. Ice crackles as it forms around him, catching his chassis and leaving him hanging above the passengers like a chandelier.

“Hello everyone!” he says. They do not stop screaming.

Raith smells blood in the car below her. Not the simple pulse of life, either. Freshly spilled by violence. She reaches the end of the car and peers down into the gap between, then snarls and swings down, her boot hitting a night-shift guard in the back and shoving him into the car with a yell. He crashes into one of his colleagues and they both go down in a heap.

Elemus Fetch turns his knifepoint glare on her. Behind him, Matteus Flamesbane hangs between two of the day guards, a long cut stretching across his chest. His blood soaks his white shirt and dribbles onto the floor of his little office.

“Uther has failed, I see,” Fetch says.

“Only as badly as you.” Raith reaches up and pulls back her hair, letting her glamour envelop her as she does. Shrouded in her power, she tilts her head to one side until her neck cracks.

A small smirk plays across Fetch’s lips, and he lays his hands on his daggers. His eyes gleam silver behind his glasses, their colour beginning to escape the iris. They make stars with black slits through them.

“I do not fail, vampire,” he says.

“Where’s she going?” Riyo complains as she and Rolleck jump the gap Raith has disappeared into.

“Leave her. She knows what she’s doing.” Rollecks words are clipped. His heart is racing as the wires around it tighten. His sword is singing a tune he has heard before, deep beneath Saviour’s Call.

They reach the first of the immobilised cars, and Riyo lets out a breath of relief. She has no idea if Uther would be capable of redistributing them when they were outside on the roof, but now she needn’t think about it anymore. Ahead, the engine huffs smoke and steam into the night, providing them with a ceiling of unfurling shapes. A dark figure heaves itself up onto the next car, its broad back to the trough of coal between them and the engine itself.

Riyo pulls up. “Garth the night warden, right?”

“As long as the Sultan’s heart beats,” he rumbles, “the trains run.”

“The train would have kept running just fine without the murder of Thaddeus Copperwright,” Rolleck says. His left eye throbs, drawn like a lodestone to the sword on the night warden’s hip.

He narrows his eyes but says nothing. Instead, he lays a hand on the hilt of his sword.

Riyo scoffs. “He knows it. He’s been given an order that makes no sense, but he’s too scared to question it.”

“Silence!” he shrieks, and Rolleck and Riyo both take a step back. His voice has risen in pitch, and now his eyes are open far too wide, their pupils burning like the heart of the train. “Kindness is weakness. Compassion is weakness. Empathy is weakness. The spice merchant got what was due to him.”

“Uh,” Riyo says.

“His sword is like mine,” Rolleck says. “Be careful.”

“That doesn’t really help. You never talk about your sword.” Riyo says. “But hey, that probably means I can just squish him. Gravity Mould.”

Her reality flares out over the desert night. At the very surface of the carriage, she feels the resistance offered by Uther’s reality, so she keeps her own above it. The air around Garth roars as it gains the weight of a mountain.

Garth screams. It’s a truly horrific sound, and the world around them flickers between resplendent purple and shimmering red. Rolleck’s sword screams in counter, and he swings around as something lashes towards Riyo’s back. His sword meets another, unseen, but the blade cuts across his forehead at his hairline, spilling blood down into his right eye. He pushes back against it with a roar and the pressure vanishes.

“What was that?” Riyo shouts. Then she blinks. There’s something driving towards her through the haze of colour. A barely-visible, heavily-distorted skeleton of withered grey bone, its massive sword swinging down towards her. Its eye sockets are filled with cherry-red bloodlust.

Riyo’s sword spins from her back and into her hands, the dragon claw crashing into the skeleton’s steel just in time to keep her head from being split open.

Then the creature is gone. She looks back to Garth to find him still. The pressure of her reality has driven him to the roof of the carriage, but he is not resisting. His eyes look empty. Riyo takes a step in that direction and the skeleton is there again. She feels it, rather than sees it, in the surety that she is about to be cleaved apart from the blind spot on her right. She turns, but Rolleck is faster. Steel clashes against iron and the presence disappears.

“Just crush him,” he pants, his eyes roving the fizzing sky.

Riyo reaches out again, but finds her reality is no longer solely hers. Uther’s has a barely noticeable bulge in it, just large enough to cover the prone form of the night warden.

“Shit,” Riyo says, focusing in and forcing Uther away. His reality retreats easily, but it is too late.

A wild-eyed night guardsman pushes himself upright, staring around at the sandy air before focusing on Riyo. His face is pale, but he reaches a shaking hand for his baton. A cold, screeching laughter fills the air and the baton is ripped from his grip as it is torn in half by a blow that cracks through the guard’s ribs. Blood fountains into the night as the spectral sword rips through him several more times before he collapses into a puddle that runs along the carriage and begins to dribble down over the windows.

Riyo grinds her teeth together, then closes her eyes against the rush of the wind and the flickering of the light. Through her reality, she feels her own mass. She feels the holes and bursts of gravity that hold her sword aloft by her side, ready to swing. She feels Rolleck, solid at her back, his balance perfect. She feels the air’s scattered shapes pulling and pushing at each other as they pass.

Something shifts, and a moment later the clash of blades rings out beside her head. Rolleck lands lightly then spins into another block. Riyo feels the weight of it blow her hair aside. Something cold touches her ear, then the heat of blood welling replaces it. She takes a steady breath. Lets it out. The fight drops away, and she feels just the air. Feels how it moves. Even as light as each particle is, it changes the world around it. Gravity. Pulling at the emptiness between everything, trying desperately to draw everything together. She can change it at her will, but she can also feel it. And it shows her the shapes, like clusters of stars. She just needs to learn from it. Learn the ebbs and flows. It’s something she does subconsciously when she fights – the knife edge that lets her flow through a fight like she is part of the very air that sustains her. She needs to learn it consciously. Needs to able to comprehend everything that happens within her reality through the way it affects the force she has chosen as its fulcrum of control.

“Give me five minutes,” she says to Rolleck in a patch of silence between the clangs of metal.

“That all?” he says, wiping some more blood from his eye with his cuff.

Emerald is surrounded by groaning humans that she is not sure what to do with. As far as she can tell there are no serious injuries among the guards, and even if there were, they are technically still her enemies. She shouldn’t be worrying about them, really.

“Can you do anything for them?” she asks the doctor. He is sitting beside her, watching the door to the next carriage through spectacles that sit at a jaunty angle across his face.

“Hmm?” he says. He then glances around. “It is my professional assessment,” he declares, “that these people all tried to kill me quite recently.”

Emerald grunts. There’s not much in the way of medicine amongst dragons. Either your wounds heal, or they kill you, as far as her kind are concerned. She knows a little of herbal medicine thanks to her training as a dryad, but the endless forest held endless greenery to learn about. They hadn’t touched on the scrub brush and ugly cacti of the desert.

“They’ll be fine,” Ginger says. He is squatting beside one of the guards, who sprawls beside his comrades. He is breathing, but not moving. “I think most of them are faking so that you don’t see them as a threat.”

“Cowards,” Uther says. “But still useful.”

Emerald starts, staring past Ginger to where the shady crafter now stands. A growl builds in her throat, fanning her pilot to a flare.

Before she can breathe, Uther is gone. In his place is a befuddled guard half-way through putting his trousers on.

“Bwa?” he says.

“Everything comes in sets,” Uther says, now a little further back amongst the fallen guards. “Cards. Carriages. People.”

He’s gone again, another guard in his place. This one is on his knees clutching his belly and groaning.

“So, anything that can be classed a set, you can reshuffle into any order you want,” Emerald says.

“Precisely.” Uther is standing next to Ginger. The guard he was inspecting is now playing possum somewhere else.

Ginger jumps, then a blade slips out of his sleeve and into his hand. It’s quite a slick move, really, but before he can jam it into Uther’s guts the crafter lifts a bright white crystal over his head and crushes it. Then Ginger is gone. In his place is a woman with sleek silver hair and eyes like a frozen pond. Spears of light burst from the motes of the broken crystal and lance through the woman, whose eyes have just begun to widen in surprise.

For a moment, everything is quiet. The desert wind continues to rush by, its chill curling around them. Then Uther grins.

“A small set, master and apprentice, but still a set.”

“What is this?” the woman growls. Only her face is moving. Her lustrous silken coat whips around in the wind, but her body is frozen.

“A light trap gem,” Uther says. “Very expensive, but worth it to capture one of the Guild’s top assassins, I think.”

Emerald lunges past the incapacitated assassin, her wings jerking back to give her a burst of speed from a standing start. She isn’t quick enough, and a moment before her fist connects a grim-faced guard appears, baton raised.

“Bloody bird-!” he manages before Emerald’s punch lays him flat.

“Huh,” she says, then glances back towards the pile of guards. Sure enough, Uther is there, and he’s off-balance. She dives for him, then, as soon as he switches, she grabs the confused guard by the front of his jacket and slams him into the ground.

Frostbite takes in the broken walls and cluster of guards, then lets out a relieved breath.

“You seem relaxed, for someone trapped so thoroughly,” Doctor Mildjum says.

“The crafter is running out of options,” she says. “Watch.”

Mildjum turns back to look at the dragon, who is eyeing up the pile of guards. After a moment, she lifts the one she has just downed and tosses him on top of one of his compatriots.

Uther flashes back into their carriage, replacing one of the downed guards. He’s clutching a book and scowling at Emerald. He flips open the cover as Emerald swings for him, and his hand closes around something concealed within the pages. A torrent of water takes hold of the book and flings it away from Uther, smashing it into Emerald’s chest. She instinctively tilts her head back to keep the water from her pilot, and the jet’s pressure forces her back down the carriage, talons digging ridges into the metal.

As the flow ebbs, she leans into it and breathes down its path, a spear of pink wrath the width of her wrist. Uther vanishes with the last of his flood, the fire swishing over the guard who appears in his place and glancing through the corner of the next carriage before flaring off over the desert.

“Seven,” the dazed guard says, blinking up at the sky where the ceiling was a moment before.

Emerald grins, then counts. On five, she digs in her claws and pounces towards the pile of guards. On six, she lands on one leg and pivots so her tail sweeps over the top of them. On seven, there is a flicker, and one of the guards vanishes so that Uther, clutching at a wound in his shoulder, appears in its path. He doesn’t have time to respond before crimson scales smash across his midriff, driving blood and bile from his mouth and slinging him from the train.

Her eyes trail him as he arcs over the sand and meet his. Still bright. Still conscious.

“Damnit,” Emerald says, throwing out her wings and leaping from the carriage just as Uther reappears at its far end among his guards.

“Got you!” he yells through bloody teeth, the book in his hands flickering from volume eight to volume thirty. He snatches the gem from its pages and darkness pulses between his fingers, spilling into the night in shreds of power.

Emerald lands in a flash of sand and wind, catching the plummeting guard in her arms and inhaling her pilot, knowing she’s too late.

Uther crushes the gem, loosing a miasma of horror that strikes all along the train. His palm burns black and red as he extends it towards Emerald. His evil smile is cast in writhing crimson shadow until it hits the deck of the car. His yell of surprise is overawed by a roar of tortured metal and a wave of corruption smashing over the edge of the car as his mana gem misfires. His scream turns to agony as shadow becomes hellish flame, then dies in a sliver of smoke that dwindles to nothing.

Emerald stares as the train pulls gently away from her, its smashed undercarriage and bent wheels screeching against the tracks. Then she blinks, taking a breath and pushing herself after it, wings thrashing the sky.

One of the guards is sitting near a perfect circle that has been scorched into them metal of the floor. Gordon Toddledown is being tended by the guards around him, all in various states of undress. His arm now ends at the elbow, where tendrils of shadow have etched into his skin and burned closed the stump of his arm. A night-shift cap and a leather-bound tome lie atop a rune in the centre of the circle, and as Emerald lands, the wind catches the cap and twirls it out into the infinite night.

Emerald picks up the book and flips it open to where the gem was hidden. The title reads Scourge of the Hellgate.

“Huh,” she says, then casts it after its owner’s hat. She looks to Gordon.

“Bastard,” he says between groans. “Sacrificing us-” he screams as one of his colleagues prods his arm.

“Sorry.”

“What happened to him?”

“I think he’s gone on unpaid vacation,” Emerald says, remembering the ashes and bones of the plane a fiery metal skeleton centaur had once proudly called Hell. “Somewhere warm.”

“What about the warden?” another of the guards says. He is watching the door into the train with nervous eyes. “What if he finds out?”

“He’s probably going to take a vacation too,” Emerald says. The wind blows by and the rails screech in protest at the dragging of the crippled carriage. Doctor Mildjum bundles himself over to Gordon and straightens his spectacles, blinking at the blackened skin of his arm. The assassin stands frozen in a ready stance, watching Emerald with calm blue eyes.

“You said you would watch over Guinevere,” she says. “Where is she now?”

“In the care of my apprentice.” Frostbite’s features are calm. Assured.

“He doesn’t seem very reliable.”

“He isn’t.”

Emerald scowls. “If something happens to that little girl, I will hold you partially responsible.”

“She’s safe,” the assassin says. The crystalised light holding her in place begins to shimmer and flash. Without taking her eyes from Emerald’s, she shrugs her shoulders and the spell breaks. Fragments fall like shattered glass as she straightens the collar of her coat. “I know when the spectre of death hangs above someone.” She turns to look up the train.

A lance of perfect white light flashes into the sky, piercing the resplendence and lighting the desert for a hundred miles around. A soft, sweet tune drifts down the carriages towards them.

“There are surprisingly few spectres around tonight,” she says.

Glitter has a good memory. He remembers everything his father ever taught him, every book he has ever read. He remembers the patterns of energy that make up everything in the world around him. This makes him incredibly smart in a lot of ways, but Albert was fond of saying that without wisdom, knowledge is worthless. Wisdom, he said, is applied knowledge.

For example, you can know that there is something seriously wrong with the people in a train carriage, but if you can’t do anything about it then you are not smart. If you cannot save them, you are not wise.

The people are still screaming. At first, Glitter had been hurt by this. Then they had kept screaming, and he realised that they weren’t even looking at him. Wide-eyed and shaking, they are nevertheless still. They stare at each other, or out of the windows, or at the floor. Whatever has them afraid, they cannot see it. Glitter cannot see it either, which means it is probably not a ghost. The question, then, is what else could possibly be that scary?

“Can anyone hear me?” Glitter calls, his voice squeaks as he strains to be heard over the screams, but it is useless. He stretches his awareness out to focus on the closest passenger. The man has black hair that is beginning to go grey and a loose white shirt that is also beginning to go grey. He is staring just past Glitter through a pair of spectacles, saliva frothing from his mouth and dripping from his lips. Glitter can sense specks of blood in it.

“Well, that’s not right,” Glitter says, beginning to hum quietly. He doesn’t know that much about human anatomy, but he is reasonably sure they are not supposed to bleed from their mouths. He does, however, know about the effects of temperature on humans. After almost killing his father by chilling their laboratory in his excitement over discovering how cheese was made, Albert had taught him all about the ideal human temperature, and the effects of lowering it.

His hum becomes louder as he goes to work, sapping the heat from the air around him. His favourite lullaby, one of the first songs Albert had taught him, lilts through the carriage to replace the heat. The furious heartbeats of terrified passengers begin to slow, coming to match the pace of his sleepy melody. A young boy slumps against his mother’s shoulder, his voice stilling, his eyes fluttering closed. Glitter keeps his little space the same temperature.

One by one, the passengers start to drop. The men at the card table collapse over it, screams turning to snores as their bodies slow to preserve their heat. When the last person’s forehead thumps into the bar, Glitter stops humming and draws himself a smile.

Then something smashes against his back. His attention flickers down the carriage, taking in the shards falling to the ground below him as it goes. Glass. Some kind of viscous liquid has splashed all over his machinery from a clear, unmarked bottle. A filament strand of something trails away from where the bottle hit him to the far end of the car, where Carolina is standing.

“Gotta say, Glitter, I’m glad no one else knows I pushed you into taking us on.” She puts the stem of a mahogany pipe in her mouth and speaks around it. “I thought Uther would just drop you all in the desert like always, but you’ve really surprised me.”

“Oh,” Glitter says, the pulse of his crystal slowing as his heart sinks. “You were lying to me, too.”

“’Fraid so. Nothing I said was really untrue, but I deceived you.” She pulls out a box of matches and strikes one, using it to light her pipe. “Still, it’s turned out a lot better for you guys than I expected. No harm, no foul, right?”

“Big foul,” Glitter says. He draws on his angry face, but realises his glass is facing the other way and she can’t see it. “You did something to the passengers, didn’t you?”

“A little concoction of mine. The boss needed to keep them from making any more messes. A little painful, for sure, only fatal to one in ten.” The match is still burning, getting close to her fingertips.

“Then you’re an enemy,” Glitter says, grabbing at the moisture around the car, careful to keep the passengers’ temperatures from dipping too far.

“Thought you might say that,” Carolina says, and bops the match against the thread that links them.

Perfect orange fire streaks up it, faster than Glitter can follow. In a pulse of his crystal, he is engulfed in flame, the liquid dripping down him catching instantly. The energy of it is incredible. He can feel it biting into his casing and pressing its heat against his crystal.

“The hottest flame outside the heart of the sun,” Carolina says with a satisfied smile. “It can melt anything. Even dragon scales.”

Glitter has never dealt with so much energy before. He draws it in, the moisture he has gathered forgotten, hanging like unspent rain along the roof of the carriage. It is endless. His pulses quicken, his extraction fans spin so fast they begin to grind against his casing. Steam flushes from his shoulder vents as the moisture he keeps within him vaporises. The calming blue of his light pales, then fades to burning white. It hurts. It feels as though his very essence is straining against the surface of his crystal. It feels as though he will crack. Will shatter. And still the fire burns.

“You draw in heat – energy – from the world around you, Glitter,” Albert said.

“Yes,” Glitter said.

“In normal crystals, this happens naturally at a consistent rate. With no outside influence, the energy is expelled simply as light.” He showed Glitter a small crystal. A distant, inert cousin. A piece of metal pierced it from bottom to top, and on each end was a gear. The crystal pulsed slowly, blue light twinkling between Albert’s fingers.

“Yes.”

“But, when pressure is applied to the crystal in some way, the crystal takes in more energy and resists.” He lay the crystal on the table so that a gear hung off the edge, then tried to twist the gear. The crystal glowed brighter and, despite Albert’s efforts, did not rotate.

“Yes,” Glitter said.

“So, by applying a little pressure to the crystal, we can force it to take in energy and spin, thus also pushing anything attached to the gear. Once the spin begins, whatever is being driven will provide its own resistance, and the output increases, until the crystal reaches its limit. The limit is different for each crystal.”

“Yes,” Glitter said.

“This isn’t relevant to you,” Albert said, shoving the crystal back on the shelf.

“Oh.” Sometimes, Glitter wondered at Albert’s teaching method. He would often repeat things that he had said before, as though Glitter might have forgotten it. Glitter did not forget anything.

“You can control the intake and distribution of energy yourself, but!” He strode forward and tapped Glitter’s glass with his gloved finger. “That doesn’t mean you don’t have a limit.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you have to be careful, Glitter. You are unique. Intelligent. You have free will.” He took a step back and removed his glove. Taking his smallest finger in his other hand, he began to bend it back. “Human beings have free will, too. This is the limit of how far I can bend this finger.” He pushed harder and his face changed shape. His finger bent further, and when he spoke again his tone had changed. “I can go beyond the limit, but it hurts. If I push any harder, my finger will break.” He stopped the demonstration. “You can do that, too.”

“I don’t have fingers, though,” Glitter said.

Albert knocked on his glass harder this time. “But you have limits, just like my finger. I’ve been thinking about them, and I want to make sure you have options.” He walked over to the bench that he had been working at lately, and that he had forbid Glitter from investigating. It now has a cloth over it, and with what he had taught Glitter was a ­‘smile’, he pulled the cloth off. “Behold, the energy displacer!”

“Wow!” Glitter said. “What is it?”

“I can push my finger back,” Albert said, lifting the device and bringing it over to Glitter. It was made up of a long pipe attached to a squat barrel. There were openings down the side of the barrel all around its circumference, and inside there were wires. “You can take in energy. If I push too hard, my finger breaks. If you take in too much energy…”

“Will I break?”

“Maybe, but with this, no matter how much energy you absorb, you will have a way of getting rid of it. You see, spiralling the energy around my patent-pending energy filament compresses it in a way that makes it much easier to impart to something else as kinetic energy. The tube contains a sphere of mana-corrupted steel that can be ejected with this energy without damaging your internals.” Albert patted the tube. “Depending on the amount of energy you’re capable of absorbing, it might end up coming out quite fast, so best not point it at anything important. Maybe we can make it come out of the top?”

“What does patent-pending mean?” Glitter said.

“Erm… Not quite sure. Just felt right, you know?”

“No. I don’t know.”

“Well, that’s something else you’ll have to learn from experience. Sometimes, things just feel right.”

“Oh.”

A gear whirls and, with a thunk of spring-loaded metal, the energy displacer tube shoots out of the top of Glitter’s chassis. As the last of the flames dies out, Glitter dumps all of his energy into the patent-pending energy filament. Sparks fly around the barrel of wires, arcing power between them and making the inside of his case flicker with lightning. His crystal slows, its colour deepening as the energy leeches away into his machinery. There is a moment of quiet peace that makes Carolina scowl.

Then the energy gets displaced.

The mana-corrupted ball of steel rides an impossible pillar of energy up into the night sky. The edges fray away into heat and light and illuminate the desert as the ball tears a hole in the resplendence. A fortune of mana gems cascade onto the sand around the tracks, and Carolina’s pipe falls out of her mouth.

Glitter feels good. After the pressure of all that energy, it’s as though his bulky body is as light as a feather. He begins whistling. Draws a smiley face on his glass.

“That was great!” he says. A knife of scalpel-sharp ice drops from the collected moisture and severs the thread between him and the mixologist.

Her hand flashes to a bottle on her belt.

“No,” Glitter says, and it’s a note of painful, discordant anger. Dozens of knives now point down from the ceiling at Carolina.

She freezes. “I don’t think you’re the murdering type, Glitter,” she says slowly.

An icicle shatters on the doorframe behind her. A line of red appears on her cheek, blood dribbling down to her chin.

“I wasn’t!” Glitter shouts, his voice cracking. “But maybe you made me that way. You and Uther and Eleanor and everyone who has ever lied to me. Everyone who hurt me just because I trusted them.”

Ice rains down and Carolina screams, covering her face with her arms. The scream covers the tinkling of broken glass, and a moment later, when she realises she hasn’t been ripped apart, she reaches down to find all her bottles shattered. Liquids soak into her trousers and drip down onto the floor. She quickly kicks away her still-smouldering pipe before any sunflame fluid gets near it, then bounces back against the wall beside the door as ice cracks in front of her. Bars rise from the carpet and encage her, twinkling in the blue light of the carriage’s mana gems.

“You just stay there until I’m less grumpy,” Glitter says, lowering himself to the floor between the tables and letting his attention focus on the greying man by his feet. He is still snoozing quietly. “How long will it take for your stuff to wear off?”

“An hour or so,” Carolina says, voice unsteady. She brings her hand up to one of the bars, but the chill radiating off it is enough to sting her hand. If she touches it, she might lose the hand before she can pull it away.

“Well, it’s probably best they stay asleep for now anyway. Riyo wouldn’t want them to get in the way.” He pushes his awareness out. Everything grows hazy, but he can feel the rough distribution of energy for several cars ahead of them. For a moment there is only stillness, then a massive wall of cold, bleak energy erupts from one of the guard cars.

“Ohhhh,” Glitter says, pulling his awareness back. “That’s… good? Bad?” He freezes the door at that end of the carriage closed, packing ice against it, then begins humming an uneasy tune. “I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

The situation in front of Vale is precarious. The small office at the back of one of the guards’ dormitory cars probably belongs to one of the night-shift’s higher-ups. It’s a close space for six people to occupy, but the single guardsman and his two prisoners probably feel reasonably comfortable. The three invisible members of the crowd are frozen in a stand-off, eyes darting from one to the other, waiting patiently for somebody to slip. The little girl clings to her mother, a leafy necklace clenched in her fist. Her mother strokes her hair and watches the guard, fear, anger and despair warring for control of her features.

The silver-haired woman wears a coat that makes Vale feel cold despite being a ghost. The creature opposite her makes hairs stand up on the back of her neck despite her no longer having a neck. It has pasty skin wrapped so close around its bones that it might as well be a skeleton, and its eyes are multi-faceted gems of deep crimson that flash in the light. It has a single finger and thumb on each hand, and a needle-like bone sticks out between them, shimmering with something toxic. Its mouth is too wide, and filled with terrible, off-yellow teeth.

“Uh, hi,” Vale says.

The room maintains its tableau, and Vale begins to feel awkward. Ravi hadn’t actually told her what to do when she found the girl. It seems the creepy bug creature wants to kill the child and her mother, while the assassin in white will not allow it. The assassin cannot move from her position lest she fail to destroy the creature utterly before it reaches its prey. The creature cannot go straight for the humans lest it give the assassin exactly the opening she needs. Clearly, the creature believes the assassin is good enough to make perfect use of such an opening. She is no flailing apprentice.

There is a flicker. A change that happens so instantaneously that nobody sees it for half a second. The assassin is gone. In her place is her ginger protégé.

“Uh oh,” Vale says, and leaps forward. She knows Ravi would be upset with her if she let the child die. She has no idea what she can do in this situation, but it will take something, or someone, with more of a physical presence than her to keep the creature from ending the spice magnate’s entire family.

She swipes at the guard, putting everything she can into the swing as the creature sees Ginger’s confusion and lunges for the girl. The guard yelps and stumbles between wither and victim, and the bony spike pierces his uniform. He grunts, then turns to look back at Vale, unaware that he is already dead.

Vale ignores him, springing over the two captives and landing in the apprentice. It feels nothing like the Death Waltz. That surging of impossible power that transforms two beings into a singular, godlike entity did not occur. Instead, Vale feels as though she is wearing a jacket that is slightly too tight. She looks down at her hands and finds that they belong to a man much taller than her. She touches her head and finds curls of thick red hair between her fingers.

“Oh,” she says, and it is not her voice.

The wither elbows the guard aside and lunges again, just as the girl’s mother turns in surprise at the sound of Ginger’s voice. Vale grabs for the shape at her belt that feels like a knife and swipes it over the woman’s head, slashing at the wither’s fingers.

“Stay away!” the girl’s mother yells, trying to shove at Vale. She lays a quick slash across the woman’s wrist – the most efficient way to make her withdraw it.

“Shut up and let me save your life,” she says with Ginger’s voice, watching as the wither draws back again, unsure what to make of this sudden competence from the apprentice.

Hold this pose for five seconds, or I will cut your throat as soon as I get back, she tells Ginger inside his own head.

Then she is gone, leaving the little office behind in favour of a carriage full of empty bunks and unconscious men. Ravi Matriya is leaning against one of the beds, his feathers ruffled and his lungs working overtime. He senses her and looks up, then sighs with relief.

“I hope Emerald got him,” he says, glancing past her at a tumble of guards near the end of the carriage.

“What-? No. Don’t care. We’ve gotta do the dance thing. Now.”

“The what?”

“Dead dance. Ghost boogie. Post-mortem paso doble. Whatever it’s called.”

“Wait, last time-”

“No time,” Vales says.

Ravi tries to step back, but there is a bed behind him. Vale slides into him as he begins to fall backwards, and this time there is a surge. This time, the chill of the grave wreathes them both and clutches the carriage in its icy embrace, incandescent azure flashing in the glass of the windows.

Vale seizes the power and slaps her hands together. Ice and lightning twirl together into the arc of a bow as she pulls them apart again, then she draws, aiming down the train.

Wait! A voice says in her mind, but she doesn’t. Somehow, she knows exactly how to let her arrow fly. How to control its power, its speed. How to make it perfectly deadly. There is a shimmering link in the air, trailing from her to the ginger boy she was just inhabiting. She aims just to the right of it.

Shadowslice is having trouble breathing. He doesn’t know where he is or how he got here. On top of this, he has just lost control of himself for a moment. For a terrifying blur of a few seconds, he had been able to see the most horrifying creature he could possibly imagine. He had attacked it. Perhaps out of instinct, or perhaps by some manner of Written providence. But then he had slashed the poor woman before a rude voice had told him to stay still.

He couldn’t move to save his life. He is too scared.

The creature, if it was real, is nowhere to be seen. The guard who had fallen over for no reason is now trying to stand up, but he seems woozy. His legs drop out from beneath him before he can push himself up the wall, and he slumps against it.

The quiet in the room is unpleasant. The subtle sobs of a little girl are all that touch the air, and all that Shadowslice can see is the ephemeral shape of that creature, looming like a monstrous insect on the backs of his retinas.

There is a silent flash of blue, then pressure washes over him, making him stumble away. He glances to his left to find an arrow quivering in the wood of the wall. Blue static flickers around it for a moment, then it explodes into splinters of twirling pine.

Angela Copperwright screams, and Shadowslice turns back to find the creature was not a nightmare, but very, very real. It stumbles towards him, right arm raised and a wet hiss emerging from its crooked mouth. Purple stains the side of its face, flows in rivulets down its skeletal torso from a gaping wound where its other shoulder should be.

Shadowslice screams even higher than Angela and throws his knife while covering his eyes with his other arm and cowering away from the creature, pressing himself against the wall. For a moment the hiss is the only sound. Then the thump of something hitting the carpet. He gingerly peeks over his arm to find the creature has fallen. Purple blood oozes into a pool around it, and the knife his master had given him upon selecting him as her apprentice juts out of its left eye.

Everyone stares at the creature, frozen by fear and confusion.

Then someone says, “Drat. Missed the heart.”

Shadowslice almost screams again, eyes darting to the door. The person that has just slipped through it, apparently without opening it, looks a bit like the bird-man, Ravi. He is taller, though, and his feathers are longer. They shimmer silvery in the dim blue light, and lightning seems to arc between them. His pure, white eyes touch on everything in the room, then he places his foot on the back of the creature’s head and presses down. With no effort whatsoever, it bursts, spraying purple across the ground.

He turns those eyes on Shadowslice and the assassin’s apprentice stops breathing.

“I wonder what your head would look like inside?”

There is a furious rush of arctic wind that carries the scent of rotting flesh and the sadness of grief, then Ravi staggers backwards, back to normal.

“I told you, you only do as I tell you or we’re done,” he says angrily, facing away from Shadowslice towards an empty corner of the room. He grabs a dagger from above his quiver and gestures towards the corner. Lightning flashes. “I’ve destroyed one ghost already with this power.”

After a tense but empty moment, he grunts and glances towards where Angela and Guinevere are huddled on a bench against the wall.  He nods, and with a palpable release of power he sheathes the dagger.

“I’m sorry if I scared you,” he says, facing the captives, “but you’re safe now. I’ll stay with you until we reach Horologium.”

“What was that creature?” Angela says, not looking at the bloody mess on the floor.

Ravi glances at Ginger.

“Um, my master called it a wither. I don’t know any more than that.”

“Then it was that… thing that killed my husband?”

Ravi looks to Guinevere, but her face remains buried in her mother’s dress.

“Yes,” he says.

“It was a member of the night staff,” Ginger says, climbing shakily to his feet. He pats his clothing for a moment then produces a sheaf of paper. “I’m truly sorry about what happened,” he says, offering the papers to Angela. “But as a member of the Guild of Assassins, it is my duty to confer these papers of contract immunity to you. They name you and your daughter alongside your late husband and bind the guild against accepting contracts against you in perpetuity.”

Angela takes the letter, red-rimmed eyes finding his. “Thank you,” she says quietly. “At least Guinevere will be safe.”

“Um, I will have to talk to my master, but I think because we hadn’t delivered them yet, you may be due some compensation from the guild.”

Angela just lowers her head and hugs her daughter close.

Ravi turns away to find Vale with her head stuck through the wall into the next carriage.

“Something I should know about?”

She pulls back and shakes her head quickly. “The sergeant seems… Well. I’m not scared of a lot, but I think we should stay here. You should open the door, though.”

Ravi does so and finds a pair of day guards holding Matteus Flamesbane between them. His shirt is dyed red, his face pale and slack. He is barely standing despite the guards’ assistance, and they stumble in together to the bench opposite Angela and Guinevere. Ravi shuts and locks the door behind them, then rushes over to Matteus.

“My train,” he mumbles. “My responsibility.”

“What happened?” Ravi asks.

“Fetch,” the left-hand guard says with disgust. “He’s a monster.” He goes to spit on the floor, then recoils in horror. “What in the Written Word is that?” There is a chunk of the wither’s brain on his boot.

“Another monster,” Ravi says, glancing back at the wall. “It seems like slaying monsters is what we do.”

Raith Ixel goes for the throat. It’s an instinct buried so deep within her that she seldom fights it. Her hand flashes out, straight as a blade and thrice as deadly, aimed at Elemus Fetch’s jugular.

She misses by the width of a hair.

“Typical vampire,” he says, leaning forward again. “You should know that none of your tricks will work on me.” He raises his blades, one held forward, the other in a reverse grip, and smirks. “You should also know that I am untouchable.”

“We’ll see,” Raith says, then lunges at him.

She feels the bite of his blade on the edge of her hand as he parries her, but the crackle of blood-lightning sears the injuries away almost as soon as they appear. She strikes for vital spots between trying for superficial strikes to throw him off balance, but his defence is precise and effortless. Her every swing falls a breath short, her every counter meets only air. He barely moves, taking only the steps that he needs to, slipping easily around the conductor’s office as though it is a dancefloor he has worked a thousand times.

Raith takes a breath and pulls back, lungs aching as they haul at the air. Fetch is still wearing the same infuriating smirk, and his breaths come as easily as if he were sleeping. Those star-shaped irises twinkle in the soft blue light.

“Even inhuman creatures of darkness grow tired eventually,” he says. “This is a game I have played before. First, they slow, then they err, then they die. It’s the same for every monster out there.”

Raith throws out power and darkness envelops her. Her blood-wreathed wings graze the ceiling and slice into the wood of the furniture on either side of her.

“You are only expediting the inevitable,” Fetch says.

In a blur of shadow, Raith is upon him. She stabs with flattened hands and wingtips, throws kicks that blow woodwork to splinters and shatter windows to let in the chill of the night. Walls come apart and the little office ceases to exist. The guards and conductor retreat through the carriage, staying ahead of the maelstrom of blows until they are forced to flee to the next car.

And through it all, Fetch is untouched, as he promised. Knives send her attacks wide, perfect little movements keep his body out of her range, and that smile drives her to greater fury. No matter what she does, though, he is always just out of reach.

“Those eyes,” Raith pants, stopping and leaning against half a chair to get her breath back. “What are you?”

“They call us nighteyes,” Fetch says, tossing one of his knives in the air. It spins like a fan blade, but he catches it again by the hilt before it can slow down. “Human beings with perfect perception and reflexes. I can see everything you are going to do the moment you decide to do it. I can see through any hypnosis or other trickery you might pull. You are an open book to me, vampire.”

“Then you’re still human,” Raith says, lunging for him. Once again, his throat is a fraction of an inch out of reach, and he tuts as his knife slashes across her throat. She jerks back, feeling blood dripping onto her collar for a moment before blood lightning flickers and the wound closes.

“Still human, yes,” he says. “But that is all I need. You may be fast, vampire, but I can move an inch far faster than you can cover the space between us. Because I know what you will do at the same moment you do, all I need do is lean back or flick my knife just so.”

“So, I just have to be faster,” Raith says, narrowing her eyes. Fetch stands in the centre of the carriage, surrounded by debris. Raith rams the tips of her wings into the walls, lowers herself ready to spring, then closes her eyes.

“Nothing moves that fast,” Fetch says, but she can hear his heartbeat rising. He doesn’t know for sure.

Between one beat and the next she lunges, wings and legs driving her forward in a pulse of power that shatters more of the woodwork. She hits the other end of the carriage hard, bending the wall out of shape and sending splinters flying up around her. There is a jagged piece of a bench sticking into her thigh, and when she pulls it out the pain of it rampages through her body unchecked. The flicker-flash of blood lightning is subdued, slow to act. Her lungs burn with the effort of drawing breath, but she clambers to her feet once more to face Elemus Fetch. She is smiling.

“Not quite untouchable,” she gasps, raising her hand. A smudge of blood drips down over her fingernail.

Fetch touches his cheek, where a red slit appears and begins leaking.

“So what?” he says with a scowl. “You are finished, vampire.”

He rushes her, but he is slow. Inhuman reflexes, perhaps, but human actions. And all Raith has to do is lift her hand to her lips.

His blood tastes thin, like the whisper of wind over grass. It seems to lift her up, make her light. Her eyes flash, and he realises his mistake too late. She sees the way his muscles contract, knows his intentions from the way his leg is rising. Her hand is already moving to block the thrust of his dagger, and she flicks it aside. At last, she can see his openings, and his perfect humanity is no match for her undead power. She grabs his wrist and twists. It cracks, but she does not let go. Her other hand meets his throat and squeezes, and the flurry of motion is over.

His other dagger drops from his limp hand, and he stares at her, pupils almost filling his strange irises. His breaths come quick and pained.

“Untrained,” she says. “Unprepared.”

“What?” he squeaks.

“I’ve known humans born with no talent, with no magical eyes or crafting to call on, who were far stronger than you. You have coasted on your inborn advantages, and it shows. You believed yourself superior. Now you know better.”

She drops him on the ground and lets him clutch at his broken arm. He coughs and then spits onto the carpet.

“Are you any better for using a stolen power?”

“No,” Raith says, sitting down on a miraculously undamaged bench. Her lungs are still aching, her wounds still gradually healing. “Neither of us is superior to the other. We all came from the same Word. The moment you think your gifts make you more worthy than others, someone, or something, will happen along to teach you otherwise.”

Fetch rolls his eyes. “So it was divine providence that brought you here?”

“Nothing so grand as a guiding hand. Just a quirk of our shared beginning that leads us to constantly reinforce our equality. Life is long, especially for creatures like me. The longer you observe a thing, the easier it is to see how it balances out.”

Fetch’s eyes narrow. “And you think you can balance the night warden? The Sultan himself, in all his power?”

“I don’t presume I can prove the balance to anyone. The Sultan? His time will come like everyone else. The night warden? I think his time has come already.”

The air is being etched by a scratchy red hue. It builds from a twitch in the spectrum of the light, lost to the peripheral vision, to a bold invasion of the space. Fetch starts laughing, harsh and uneven. It is a response to his fears.

“Too far,” he says. “You’ve pushed him too far. We’re all going to die!” He falls back in hysterics, leaving Raith to stare down the train towards the engine, her senses on edge. Beyond Fetch’s mania, there is more laughter. Subtle. Terrifying, even to her.

Something grey flickers across her vision and the wall further up the carriage bursts, a gash appearing that almost connects floor to ceiling. Raith jumps to her feet, wavering, her eyes moving everywhere. After a moment, it happens again. Almost random but getting closer. Seeking life to extinguish.

“It’s getting faster, Riyo,” Rolleck says.

The roof of the carriage is a mess of wounded metal and wood. The creature is now a whirlwind – unfocused, but more deadly than ever. Its attacks are nigh invisible, save for a flash of grey steel before an explosion of violence. Rolleck and Riyo stand at the centre of it, where the majority of the strikes fall. Rolleck has watched the ones that fail to hit them and determined that it is striking several times a second, and that the roof further and further down the train is coming under fire. It is expanding, and soon enough the dining car and passenger carriages are going to be in range.

The movements are so swift, so precise, that keeping the creature from Riyo is stretching him to the point of breaking. The iron in his body is wound tight enough that he can practically hear it straining, threatening to break.

Uncontrolled, the voice is saying as he fights. A beast of no composure, no finesse. And yet, there is something to be said for the explosive power of such a release.

His sword is singing a tune he can barely keep up with, shivering in his grip and rushing its excitement through him.

Nowhere to run but the vast desert. Nowhere to hide but behind those you wish to protect. You have control now, but could you maintain it if this was your fate? If such power were yours? I wonder.

“No,” Rolleck breathes. “I don’t need it.”

So you say. But eventually you must face it. Face me.

The creature is moving even faster, and Rolleck has to give up protecting himself in order to cover Riyo. The sword bites into his flesh, clashing against the wires in his body. They are the only reason it doesn’t shear off his limbs, doesn’t shred him to pieces. Blood leaks from his wounds as he dances around Riyo, the song of his sword growing fainter, the voice’s laughter and offers of poisoned aid quieting. He pushes against the pain and fatigue, pushes against the deep ache in his muscles and the cold dread of overwhelming exhaustion. He pushes up to his absolute limit, past it, until time seems to stop. He sees the skeleton moving towards him, sees an opening as it lifts its great sword. Rolleck swings into that opening, strikes for its cackling skull.

The creature is gone.

The wires clench, stopping Rolleck dead. He watches through misted vision as the skeleton swings. Watches as the sword crashes towards Riyo’s neck. He cannot move. Cannot breathe. Cannot save her.

Riyo’s eyes spring open and daggers burst from her clothing. Every hidden blade she owns flits out around her as the dragon claw sword leaps to intercept the blow that would decapitate her. The clash of metal rings like a dropped cutlery drawer all around them, expanding outward as Riyo’s blades find the creature’s sword wherever it falls.

Rolleck drops to his knees, his body a cacophony of pain to match the discordant sounds around him. The roar of the train and the rush of wind, the clatter and clang of violence, all seem to press him into the ground.

Riyo kneels before him, and he can barely see her.

“Thank you, Rolleck,” she says. “That last attack gave me everything I need. Sorry it took so long.”

“You better be,” he mumbles, then falls onto his back and watches the red-tinted stars flash at him. They’re hypnotising, and he feels his consciousness ebb.

Saved again, the voice says, though for once it doesn’t sound disappointed or condescending.

“’Swhat friends are for,” he manages before his eyes close.

Riyo knows where the creature is. Better yet, she knows what it is. Rolleck has forced it to give away its secrets. She takes a breath, then alters gravity around her. The air drifts away from her, and she is left standing in a vacuum. The creature’s blows keep falling upon the train, keep seeking for Rolleck where he lies. But they do not come for her. Despite being at the very centre of the storm, she is untouched. She smiles to herself.

Maintaining the ring of knives around Rolleck, she leaps over the coal car and walks through the boiler room, then kicks open the door to the cabin. Inside, she lets the air close in on her again, taking a deep breath.

Garth the night warden stands by the train’s controls. Avril the lamia lies beside him, unmoving. There are bloody marks on her tail and her vest is ripped and dyed red in several places. Garth turns. His eyes are normal but sunken, as though his skin has tightened around his skull.

“The trains must run,” he says, voice empty. He draws his sword.

Riyo grits her teeth, still looking at Avril. The skeleton strikes from behind as the night warden lunges. The dragon claw sword flashes out in front of her, catching the cursed blade. Behind her, the air opens up. Vacuum forms around the skeleton, and it finds itself in a bubble prison, surrounded on all sides by empty space. Its mad laughter is cut off completely.

“What?” Garth says slowly.

“Your skeleton uses the air, somehow,” Riyo says. “Hijacks it make its form.” She turns away from Garth and faces his monster. She has peeled away every spare molecule, leaving only those that form bones and steel trapped in a sphere of nothing. It cannot move or change. It stares at her with hollow red eyes, but its voice is silent.

“Nowhere left to run,” she says, and the creature contorts as it is drawn into the centre of its prison. Its shape fails, becoming a formless grey mass. Then that shrinks down into a marble. A pea. A speck.

Garth’s tired eyes widen as his sword cracks, then falls apart.

“No,” he whispers. Then Riyo steps up to him and slams her fist into his gut. Her punch drives air and spit from him and carries him up through the ceiling of the cab. He vanishes out into the sand swept darkness. The hilt of the sword clatters on the metal floor, then the silence of the desert finally returns.

“Jerk,” Riyo says, then closes her reality. It snaps against her brain like over-stretched rubber, making her wince. She kneels down beside Avril and touches her pale throat. A soft, slow pulse shakes her fingertips, and she sighs with relief. “I wonder what happened to that doctor?”

As the train crashes into the dawn, Riyo sits atop its cab, watching. The pure, white light streams beneath the edge of the resplendence and warms her face, then spreads out over the sand, turning it to gold. Riyo’s reality follows it, and she feels the way the air moves between the grains. She feels the pressure as sand sharks burrow up towards the surface to warm themselves in the first rays. In the cab, she feels the conductor shift his weight against a lever. Despite his injuries, Matteus Flamesbane is duty-bound to guide the train to station. Or so he says. Nobody has had the heart to stop him.

Emerald heaves one last shovelful of coal into the boiler, then lets the inferno settle on her scales as she watches the flames dance. It reminds her of home, of family, now lost to her. She feels an ache, for, although she chose this path, there was another she could have taken. One that would have seen her follow her father. Sit by his side. She glances down the train and sees through all the walls to where an exhausted girl sleeps in her mother’s arms. She lets out another weary sigh and closes the door of the boiler.

“It’s not as though anybody else is going to try anything now,” Ginger says.

“Attitudes like that get people like us killed,” Frostbite says. She leans against the door outside the Copperwrights’ room, wrapped in a stillness that must be painful to maintain.

“If I were an assassin,” Vale says, “I’d strike while everyone’s worn out and the train is in chaos.”

Frostbite nods. “Ghost’s got a killer’s instinct.”

“Thank you!”

“That’s not really a compliment,” Ravi says.

“It is when it comes from an assassin.” Vale turns to Ginger. “You can really see me now, huh?”

He winces, not meeting her eyes. “Yes.”

“That’s quite interesting, isn’t it Master?”

“It’s worrying, is what it is,” Ravi says. “What do you make of it?”

Frostbit shrugs. “I don’t know much about ghosts. I can only see them because of this.” She tugs at the collar of her coat.

“I knew there was something special about that,” Vale says, reaching out to run her hand over the shimmering silken material.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” Frostbit says. “I stole this from a Reaper. It’ll undo a ghost like that,” she snaps her fingers.

Vale hastily withdraws her hand. “Well. That’s cool. How did you do it?”

“That’s not a story I’m going to share with you.”

Vale pouts. “No fair.”

The dining car is not ready for breakfast. A couple of chefs are fussing around in the kitchen, putting together simple meals for a hungry train. The passengers will be served in their rooms, as the dining car itself has been turned into both a prison and a hospital. The battered and bruised lie on uncomfortable tables while a fully sober and fully grumpy Doctor Mildjum administers their rough-and-tumble care.

“A strip of tablecloth is not a good substitute for a bandage!” he grumbles. “How can this train be so poorly stocked with medical supplies when it is so heavily stocked with armed idiots?” He pulls the offending material tight around Rolleck’s arm, making him wince.

“I appreciate the effort you’re going to,” he says through gritted teeth.

“You, I suppose, deserve it. But half of these ingrates were happy to see me cleaned up by whatever that… thing was.” He shudders.

“Best not to think about it.” Rolleck sits up, letting his wounds announce themselves and cataloguing their complaints for later. “There are a lot of dangerous things in the world that you’ve just got to hope you never run into.” He looks over at the glittering bars of ice that separate the righteous and injured from the malefic and injured.

“I get the impression that’s a warning for me, and not for yourself,” Mildjum says. “You and your friends are insane.”

“We are,” Rolleck agrees. “But when you’re insane, you can’t be driven insane, and that makes you strong.”

Doctor Mildjum stares into Rolleck’s burning left eye and suppresses another shudder. “I shall keep that in mind.”

“Listen up, maggots!” Glitter says. “This is prison!”

His audience aren’t really paying attention. Many of them aren’t even conscious. The ones who are have glazed expressions or stare at the floor without saying anything. At their forefront sit Carolina the alchemist, Elemus the nighteye and Avril the lamia. Carolina watches him like he’s a broiling beaker full of unknown chemicals, Elemus has his eyes squeezed closed and grinds his teeth. Avril stares into the middle distance, a soft frown on her face.

“And not just any prison! This is Glitter’s maximum security detention centre! Anyone who displeases me, well…” He lets the threat dangle in silence for dramatic effect.

“Hey, you’re friends with Riyo, right?” Avril says. If she is cowering from Glitter’s threat, she is doing it on the inside.

“You will speak when spoken to, prisoner!”

“Yeah, okay, but what does she like?”

“Uh-”

“Because I thought I could win her over by ambushing Garth, but that didn’t really work out. And now that I think about it, I think maybe she wanted to be the one to beat him anyway. So maybe it’s for the best. I just… I want to make her see me, you know? Because I made such a dreadful first impression, and even so she was so gallant. And she gave me another chance and I really don’t want to mess it up, you know?”

“Um-”

“Seriously, though, she’s so cool. You’re so lucky you get to travel with her and see her in action all the time… You know, maybe-”

“By the Word, shut up!” Elemus growls. “That’s more words than I’ve heard you speak the entire time we’ve worked this damn train together. What happened to you?”

“I fell in love, duh,” Avril says. “It changes a person, you know?”

“It doesn’t usually completely invert someone’s personality, though,” Carolina says.

“And how would you know?”

Carolina looks away bitterly. “I guess I wouldn’t.”

“See? Love is wonderful, and now back to Riyo. Glitter… Oh.”

Glitter is pretending to be a cupboard. He vibrates slightly, and a pair of delicate crystalline ice cubes pop out of one of his shoulder vents.

Raith Ixel sits in an empty car. There are no heartbeats close enough to stoke her bloodlust, and no light penetrates the windowless walls. She has removed the mana gems and allowed the darkness to consume her whole. It is soothing, and she needs that calm. Her lips move, mouthing prayers for peace that were said to be contained within the Holy Writ itself.

Even like this, she can hear the hunger climbing up out of her gut and pulling at her hindbrain. Think of all the power, it says. Wear their strength as you own. Sate the urge. Answer the call to blood. Her hands are shaking, her muscles tense. The words flow, but the hunger only grows. It presses in on her, blocking out all else, making her teeth ache and her head spin. The train seems to roar in her ears as she feels herself slipping, slipping, sli-

“Are you okay, Miss?”

Everything snaps. The darkness turns red, and Raith looks up, eyes glowing crimson. Her nails stretch to claws to rend the life from the undeserving living.

There is a boy behind her. He holds a candle with a twinkling yellow flame that sets him in halo of light, entrapped by darkness. His eyes go wide, and the candle tumbles to the ground. Raith’s hand flashes out and grabs it before it hits. She stands over the shivering child and offers it to him.

“Be careful,” she says, voice as sweet as she can make it. It strains her throat. “It’d be bad if the train caught fire.”

“Uh, yeah,” he says, taking back his candle. “Um. My sister said that there was… that you were here in the dark and I wanted to see if you were… alright…”

“Thank you. I’m fine. I just find the darkness calming.”

“Oh, okay. I’m going to join the World Force one day, so I have to be…” He takes a moment to think, biting his thumb as he draws the words to mind. “Responsible for the wellbing of the people!”

The hunger is receding. Despite the timpani thump of the boy’s heart, the animal is retreating in the face of a wave of empathy. Rath reaches into her jacket and sits down before the boy, presenting her chewed-up sergeant’s badge for his inspection.

“That’s why I joined up.”

“Wow! You’re a sergeant?” The boy’s eyes shine brighter than his candle.

“Was. I retired recently. I’m older than I look.”

The boy reaches out gingerly and takes the medallion, turning it over and running his fingers over the bronze.

“You can have that, if you like,” Raith says. “As long as you promise you’ll get big and strong and protect those who need it, now that I can’t.”

“I’ll do it!” He says, jerking to attention and throwing up a passable salute.

Raith stands and returns it. “You should head back to your family now, soldier. We’ll be arriving soon.”

“Yes, sergeant! It has been anona to meet you!” He takes his candle and its light off into the next carriage.

Raith looks up and smiles, touching her other mark of office. “All from the same Word. All the same underneath.”

Bong.

The off-grey light of the speaking crystal in the centre of the carriage ceiling lights up, as if in response to her prayer.

Ravi stares at the ceiling, hand on the hilt of his dagger. “What was that?”

“First time on a train?” Ginger says.

“Yes. Well. First time on a normal train.”

“It’s an announcement,” Vale says. “It means we’re nearly there.”

Ladies and gentlemen, the ceiling says.

“Is that Riyo?” Ravi says.

We will shortly be arriving in Horologium. Thank you for riding this… There is a muffled conversation. This delayed dawn-to-dusk service from… Oh, cool, we stopped there. How are the princesses? Oh. Sorry. Ahem. From Saviour’s Call to Ragg. The train staff that remain would like to apologise for any disruption caused by the actions of the night staff. The safety of passengers is the Sultan’s first priority… Yeah, I’m not sure that’s true. Should I not say that bit? Oh. Ha! You’re right. Um. Oh, yeah! Anyway! Horlogium in, like, fifteen minutes or so. Get your stuff together. Peace out.

Bong.

“You hear that, mongrels?! Your doom awaits!”

“What exactly do you think is going to happen to us when we arrive in Horologium?” Elemus says.

“Uh, doom?” Glitter says. “Or a proper prison, at least.”

“Ha!” His laugh jolts his arm and cuts out any mirth. He scowls. “The Sultan owns the rails. The stations. Everything! We did what we did on his orders. The station guards won’t let you off the platform until we’re free.”

“That’s… not fair.” Glitter draws himself a scowl to match Elemus’.

“It’s also not what’s going to happen,” Rolleck says, strolling over from his sickbed.

“What do you know?” Elemus growls.

“He’s right,” Carolina says. “There are too many witnesses. The Sultan has a reputation to maintain.”

“Some of his employees, dissatisfied with their generous lot, attempted to take over a train. They put his invaluable passengers at risk. He gives a wide, public apology, everyone on the train gets some manner of compensation, and the successful assassination of Thaddeus Copperwright gets swept away as part of the chaos.” Rolleck gives Elemus a pitying look. “You were always expendable to him.”

“But…” Elemus’ head droops. “Shit.”

“Oh,” Glitter says. “Um…”

“You want to help them now, don’t you?” Rolleck shakes his head.

“Punishment should allow the chance for redemption,” Glitter says. “I think, anyway. I don’t think what the Sultan will do to them is justice. He doesn’t seem like a very pleasant man.”

“You’re not wrong about that,” Rolleck says. “Actually, I have an idea.”

“Yay!” Avril says. “I need to avoid dying so that I can figure out how to win over Riyo.”

Elemus looks up again, sceptical.

“Yes,” Rolleck says. “It was you guys who gave me the inspiration.”

Riyo sits on the end of the train, a mere five minutes shy of Horlogium station. Beneath her dangling feet, the remnant of a train carriage drags along the tracks, its bowed shape occasionally striking sparks. The wreck is full of guards.

“It’s your call, Riyo,” Rolleck says.

“Is that because I’m the leader?”

“Yes,” Glitter says, just as Rolleck says, “No.”

“Well, they’re idiots, but I don’t think they deserve to die.”

“So this is your great plan?” Elemus sneers.

“Do you have a better one, maggot?” Glitter demands.

He withers.

“I thought so. Know this!” Glitter spreads snow around himself that shimmers in the newborn light of the dawn. “You have been granted a second chance by the great and merciful Riyo Falsemoon. It is for you to become better! To make better choices! To help, where once you hurt! To heal, where once you harmed! Take these lives that have been spared and turn them to a better tomorrow!”

Rolleck strikes the ice that holds the last car in place, and, with a jolt, it starts to fall behind.

“I’ll come find you, Riyo!” Avril yells. “My heart is yours forever!”

She continues yelling, but her voice fades as the metal dragging along the track acts as a break and leaves them amidst the shining desert.

“So,” Riyo says. “What’s Horologium like?”

“We’ll know soon enough,” Ravi says, entering the last carriage. They follow him in, and Emerald pulls the platform-side door open.

They watch as the sand flits by, and buildings start to appear. Camels pull carts as they trawl the sands for newly fallen gems. Arching trees replace cacti, and the closer they get the thicker they grow. The train decelerates as the buildings get larger and closer. The sunlight catches in the resplendence, and the city is painted in soft lilac.

The train pulls to a halt by a dusty brick platform.

“Wow!” Riyo says.