Wintercraft (10 page)
‘You shouldn’t have come here, Ed,’ he said at last. ‘Da’ru’s just in there. She’ll know.’
‘Just tell me, which way are they taking the prisoners out this time?’
‘She’ll know that I told you. She always does.’
‘I’ll be long gone before then.’
‘
I
won’t be.’
I
won’t be.’
Edgar’s face fell. ‘You know I can’t take you yet,’ he said. ‘There are wardens crawling all over this town. Da’ru would catch us both before we were two streets away. One day … soon, I promise, but not now. I can’t risk you getting hurt. You do understand that, don’t you?’
Someone moved inside the building. Tom threw off the blanket and tugged at his torn clothes to make himself look presentable. ‘Go on!’ he whispered. ‘She’ll kill you if she sees you, Ed. She swore she would.’
Edgar took off his hat and planted it on to Tom’s cold head. ‘That is
not
going to happen,’ he said. ‘Now, are we brothers or not? Which way are they taking the prisoners?’
not
going to happen,’ he said. ‘Now, are we brothers or not? Which way are they taking the prisoners?’
Tom looked nervous, pulled off the hat and stuffed it into his pocket. ‘They’re going to stop the night train,’ he said quickly. ‘It’ll pass through at sunset on its way back to Fume. But don’t go out there, Ed. You don’t know what’s happening. Silas is out there!’
‘We’ve already met,’ said Edgar, pulling off his gloves and pressing them and some of his matches into his brother’s hands. ‘Look after yourself. Stay warm. I’ll come back for you. You know I will.’
Tom clutched the gifts in his shivering hands. ‘Wait! Ed!’
Edgar looked back at the boy in the snow and then a door latch clicked, forcing him to dive into the darkness between two houses.
The shadows swallowed him completely as a well-dressed woman stepped out into the street; she could not have looked more out of place if she had tried. There Edgar was, crouching in one of Morvane’s poorest streets at one of its most desperate times, and there she was, pristine and perfect, her silvery dress snaking across the ground, her boots jet black and delicately heeled, her elegant shoulders poised and relaxed beneath a hooded shawl of grey and brown fur. Wolf fur. Only one woman in Albion chose to wear wolf fur, such was her low regard for any life other than her own. Her long black hair was tied back and pinned with a pointed bone, her cuffs were edged with tiny rubies and her lips were painted grey. The owner of the boarding house stood behind her, looking like a well-used penny next to a freshly minted coin.
Da’ru ignored him, raised the fur hood and let her perfect face disappear beneath its shadow, while Tom tucked his blanket into the back of his trousers, trying not to look over to where Edgar was hiding. Da’ru stepped aboard the carriage and Tom clung on to the luggage rack at the back, squeezing himself in like a lumpy travelling bag and tugging on his gloves as soon as his mistress was out of sight.
Edgar did not want to let his brother go with her, but there was nothing he could do. The horses pulled forward, and silently he watched them leave.
Anyone who saw that carriage would probably not notice anything different about it. The horses were standard greys, the wheels were plain and the doors were unmarked, giving no hint to the real identity of its passenger. But Edgar knew very well who she was. Da’ru Marr: the only female member of Albion’s High Council, and the only one who counted herself as one of the Skilled. Wherever she went she always brought trouble.
Edgar dug his bare hands into his pockets and tried to get his bearings. If the wardens were putting the prisoners on the night train, Silas would be with them and he would definitely be keeping Kate close by. The train station was on the opposite side of town, so he had some time. It would take the wardens a while to move everyone there, even in those cages, and the train would not arrive until after dark. If he kept moving, he should be able to make it.
It was risky. The last thing Edgar wanted to do was go up against a town full of wardens. It would have been a lot easier for him to just sneak out of Morvane and try to disappear again, or at least find somewhere safe to hide until it was all over. But Kate was far too important to him for that. He wasn’t about to just leave her behind.
His mind was set.
He had outsmarted the wardens once before. Now it looked like he would have to do it again.
Edgar was concentrating so hard on what he had to do that he did not realise that he was not the only one who had watched Da’ru leave. Silas stood at the circular window, watching him disappear into the falling snow. He had to admire the boy. He was even more daring than he had expected. He ran his thumb across a deep scar on the palm of his right hand. A curling brand made by searing hot iron into flesh, the same brand that had once brought him back to life from the furthest reaches of death. It had never healed. After twelve years it was still as raw as the moment it was made and sometimes he thought he could still see a few sparks of fire smouldering inside the wound, burrowing down a little deeper year after year.
He lurked by the window like a wolf in the shadows, waiting for the boarding-house owner to climb the stairs and, when the old man finally made it up to the landing, he opened the door before his knuckles had even touched the wood to knock.
The man smiled nervously on the other side.
‘Good work,’ said Silas, tossing a small coin pouch into his hands.
‘Thank you, sir. And … will there be anything else today?’
‘No,’ said Silas. Outside, the snow was easing and Kate was watching him warily from the desk chair. ‘It is time for us to leave,’ he said. ‘The girl and I have a train to catch.’
6
The Night Train
Back inside the black carriage, Kate sat beside Silas as they rolled their way speedily back across town. But this time, Silas opened one of the curtains to make sure he wasn’t being followed, giving Kate the chance to see her town for one last time.
The snow made it all look eerie and unreal. Children wandered without parents, dogs snuffled through the streets, and the black robes of the wardens were never far away, breaking down doors or wrestling people into cages. She thought about Artemis and about all the years they had spent worrying about this day. It had made no difference in the end. Artemis was gone. Edgar was gone. Kate was alone.
It was almost dark by the time she spotted the Night Train’s thick tracks slicing through the town like a scar, carving a hard iron curve through the Eastern Quarter as it threaded from the trading towns of the north to the capital city of Fume in the distant south. Those rails linked every town in Albion like an ominous metal vein, and the people who lived close enough to see the Night Train pass by always closed their curtains against its eerie light. It was easier to pretend that it didn’t exist, that it didn’t choke the air with foul smoke and leave the heavy rumble of metal on metal thrumming through the ground long after it had gone.
The road they were travelling upon ran alongside a stone wall that lined the track’s route, but Kate did not recognise this part of town. The houses were larger and grander than any other part of Morvane, yet few people lived there. The station cast too dark a shadow over that part of the Eastern Quarter. It made people uncomfortable. Kate had seen pictures of the station in books at her uncle’s shop, but he had never let her see it for herself. Now she was so close to it, she found that her curiosity had gone. She didn’t want to see it any more. All she wanted was to be back at home, getting ready for the Night of Souls, living life just as she had lived it the day before. But all that was impossible now. Silas had made sure of it.
The driver shouted out to someone up ahead. A gate screeched open and the carriage wheels crunched on to gravelled ground, rolling past row after row of wheeled cages with flaming torches punched into the ground to light the paths between them. There were many more there than Kate had expected. What she and Edgar had seen in the market square must have been only a small part of the wardens’ plans for the town that day. There were at least five times as many cages outside that station than had been in the square, all filled with so many people that it was hard to believe the wardens had left anyone behind.
Most of the prisoners were yelling angrily at the wardens, rattling their bars, trying to find a way out. Others were trying to bargain with them, offering up their businesses or savings for a second chance at freedom, while the rest just sat there, quietly accepting the grim truth that they were no longer in control of their lives.
‘Every one of these people will do their duty to Albion,’ said Silas. ‘Just as thousands of others have done before them. You are fortunate you are not one of them.’
‘My uncle is one of them,’ Kate said quietly.
‘That part of your life is over. There is nothing you can do for him now.’
The blazing torches lit up the night and, as the carriage turned, Kate finally saw the station with her own eyes. It was an ancient place, centuries old, built for a single track and one special train. Kate knew from her books that, long ago, the gravel where the cages now stood had been a beautiful garden where the coffins of Morvane’s dead were taken before being carried by train to Albion’s graveyard city. Friends and family would have gathered for a funeral in that garden before passing the coffin over to the bonemen - the keepers of the dead - who took it on to the train, ready to make its final journey south.
The bonemen were a select group of the Skilled who had devoted their lives to helping the spirits of the dead pass safely out of the living world and into the next. They had once been the sole guardians of the graveyard city, performing complex rituals, maintaining the tombs and graves of the many families interred beneath its earth and ensuring that their remains were treated with respect long after their funeral day had passed. But that was before the wardens had claimed the Night Train for themselves, before the bonemen had been driven into hiding and one of the old High Councils had walled up the country’s burial ground, transforming it into the great fortress city of Fume.
Fume was now a place for the wealthy, not the dead, and since the war with the Continent had begun, it had been the only town spared the threat of the wardens’ harvests. Living in the shadow of the High Council came at a high price, but for those willing to pay it, Fume was the only place in Albion to feel truly safe. The tall memorial towers looked down over stone streets, built to house the High Council’s most trusted followers and their families, while the extensive underground maze of caverns and tombs were left to lawless groups of smugglers and scavengers who managed to scrape out a living down in the dark. The needs of the rich were served by hundreds of servants and slaves, and none of them ever gave a thought to the thousands of dead still buried beneath their feet.
In its prime, Morvane’s station had been a simple building built from black stone. The main structure straddled the tracks like a long tunnel and a large arched entryway jutted out into the garden, with a large wooden door that was always open, ready to welcome the dead. That was how Kate had seen it in drawings copied from that time, but now it looked very different.
Without the garden to soften its dark façade, the station was a bleak, miserable place. It looked angry and broken. Rain and wind had worn away most of the entryway, leaving only the right-hand wall and a few crumbling pieces of the rest. The wooden door lay rotting on the ground; metal beams that had once held a curved slate roof were gradually being devoured by rust; and, alongside what was left of the main building, a decrepit clock tower stood like a sentry overlooking the tracks. Normally that tower would have been in darkness, but on that night its roof was alive with a crown of dancing fire. The wardens were signalling the Night Train, ordering it to stop.
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