Chapter Three

The Devastation

Agloff Ashborne poked the cut of his torch round the door of the switch station. Ancient dust swirled in wayward motions. He swung a foot out at the brick dust and watched it settle on ground untouched for centuries.

He called out.

The slight whistle of autumn wind answered through the bricks. Inside, he saw panels of controls, dust-laden lights and switches fused into their panelling by centuries of erosion. Signs warned the occupiers in event of emergency and a deck of screens were raised to one side by a desk that had collapsed in the middle.

Content there was no one here, he left.

‘S’clear!’ Agloff yelled down the tracks. He hopscotched from slat to slat, between long grasses and into the overhang of the railway station. The line split in two, a platform fed in between them. Above, an arching hanger was divided into grids of glass panels, many of which had fallen through.

Dust and dirt caught in the downpouring shafts of sunlight, much as they had in the switch station.

Agloff tightened his straps, glanced around. ‘Hey!’

‘Yeah! Sorry.’

Ariea climbed through a hatch along one side of the platform and her head poked above ground. ‘Nothing down there either.’ She chucked a longarm rifle up onto the platform, then clambered after it.

Agloff followed to where she stood, and each swatted the dust from their raincoats. Crows circled above them, hunting for insects burrowed into the walls perhaps.

‘You heard anything at all?’ Agloff asked.

‘Just a lot of creaky old… old stuff.’ She dragged her rucksack across her shoulders. ‘Nothing human, anyway.’

‘Since Troder Hills, how much have these patrols actually turned up defectors?’

‘Kira said she found a warehouse with a coupla hundred migrants from Block Two heading west. I know Dann picked up two squatters other week. Pilgrims.’

‘Deserters?’

‘Seems so.’

Agloff grunted. This was their furthest patrol yet as part of their reparations to Fort Wishbone. Compensation for the loss of Winter’s services after Malvo Jask’s death. They were twenty miles past the Erwood. In two days, it hadn’t turned up anything. Councillor Riddis spoke about defending their borders in the vacuum of Winter. Gangs and bandits were showing up closer and closer. Winter were once patrons to these sorts, as they had been to Kira. Now, they took their custom to pillaging.

If Wishbone didn’t routinely sweep for the like, they left themselves vulnerable. Their apathy handed power and initiative to Yara Poll of Fort Spear. And if there was one thing Agloff knew Ellen Riddis of Wishbone could not stand, it was the thought of Poll as heir to Winterland. Spear was the only settlement on Principia’s shores whose reach exceeded Wishbone’s.

‘I know we’re kind of tired and all, but did you have plans when we got back?’ Agloff said as they traipsed up the platform. He looked at her and smiled.

‘By plans, do you mean sit in pyjamas and listen to sad music really loud on headphones and get in my feelings? Then, yes. I was just planning to gorge on Merry’s cookies and sleep a lot, to be honest.’

‘Wow.’

‘Hot, right?’

‘You could play the music.’

Ariea laughed. ‘My arms are jelly, Ag. Also, I’m really not as good as you think I am. You’ve just not heard better.’

‘If it sounds good, it sounds good. But I was gonna ask if you wanted to go the fair this week.’

‘Aww. Are you asking me on a date?’

He felt his cheeks ripen. ‘Possibly. When was the last time?’

‘I can’t believe you think hiking through open country for days on end to sift through dusty old buildings full of cobwebs isn’t romantic. There’s no one around. Lover’s paradise, right here.’

‘Wait, you mean we could—’

‘Ew, no.’ She laughed, swiped his arm. ‘Not actually.’

Then, a crow strafed over them. It squawked and a ribbon of fabric that had been tied above them flittered in its wake. Winter’s mark was worn into the folds. The crow circled back and Ariea yelped, reached a hand to a pillar as they passed.

‘Ari?’

Her back pulsed in sharp crests as she panted. She looked at the limp flag. ‘It’s still gets to me, you know.’

‘What does?’

‘What I did.’

Agloff rushed around her and held her hand. ‘Look at me. I’ve said it a thousand times, and I will say it for as long as you need. Jask deserved to die, for a million reasons. You did nothing wrong.’

‘It’s not easy to tell myself. I killed.’

‘It’s okay to feel guilty, but you did nothing wrong. We said, remember. We decided whatever happened, it wasn’t our fault. We were going to die.’

‘When I’m tired, it comes sometimes. And I’m tired a lot of the time. I can’t get rid of the feeling.’

He cupped her hands in his and kissed them, then drew her in close.

‘How do you not feel it?’ she whispered. ‘We changed the whole world in that room.’

‘I feel it. What he and Jask did to Eron, what Jask did to you. It’s hard.’ It ate at him sure enough, a slow and unsleeping rage.

Ariea had told Agloff about the dark place, glimpsed in the Erwood. A terribly vast and empty place that would come and suffocate her, and crush the hope of living from her bones. Her visits there were less frequent now. To Agloff, what followed Jask’s demise was someone else’s problem. For them, it had only ever been survival.

But in Ariea he saw something else. No matter how much he told her otherwise, she felt responsible, he could tell. For everything.

‘I love you,’ Ariea breathed. ‘I’d like to go the fair, I think. I want to do something normal people do.’ Her head peeped from his chest. He looked down at her and thought how strong she was.

‘I love you.’

They swayed under the wind a moment. They were tiny in the yawning mess of growth and red bricks, standing in the tracks of giants. There, he just held her, and they listened to distant birdsong.

‘I think,’ Agloff said, as they parted to walk again, ‘that you’re the only person in the history of everyone who could possibly understand me.’

She grinned. ‘We’re a miserable couple, true.’

He took her hand and they carried upwards, passing through timeless concrete and brick dust. He was sure this place was mundane to those that built it. But, in entropy it had become extraordinary.

A building next to a wide platform had crumbled under the weight of its isolation. While growth punctured upwards from within at searching angles towards the sunlight. It was a slow war, unchanging in the moment, but devastating in decades. It felt almost haunted, this place. Even now, it held the memory of all who had ever passed through.

It reminded Agloff of the land outside Eden, in all its overgrowth.

‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it,’ Ariea said as she scanned the sprawl.

‘It is. I love old places, pre-Departed. There’s something sad, but peaceful about them.’

‘“If assured of nature’s devastation at the hand of man, I would accept man’s devastation at the hand of nature.”’

‘Who said that?’

‘Some guy. I read it in a book. It’s pretty.’

‘I was hoping you were gonna say you thought of it yourself.’

‘Ha. You have too high opinion of me, in that case.’

Agloff shrugged, as if to admit it was the truth.

A freight car sat parked on the line ahead of them. It sank into a bed of long grass, pushed up against the wall of the station and two more keeled over sideways beside it, like dominoes.

A tangle of matted grasses fed through. Agloff glimpsed his torch and spied a narrow gap. Ariea did not wait for his invitation. She tossed her rifle onto the step of the car and climbed after it then held a hand to haul Agloff after her.

‘Reckon we just go to as far as the end of the station then circle back, sweep the outsides?’ she said.

Agloff nodded in the cut of his torch.

The chilled breeze that accompanied them was traded for parched air. He felt choked by the plants pressing against him. It stirred memories of the Erwood.

They fell through into the last stretch of station. The end of the line was stacked up with carriages upon carriages. Some upright. Some tipped at right angles, knocked from their perches on the tracks by something or other. Agloff and Ariea ebbed and weaved around them, like this was some strange city. Amongst it, it felt like the patterns of carriages and freight cars could repeat forever.

‘Don’t walk too fast,’ Agloff said, unsheathing his pistol. ‘Never know what’s about.’

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‘Sure. Oxford would be proud of you, you know.’

‘Think you’re expecting too much there.’

‘He resented the fact of you, not you personally,’ Ariea said, as if that made any sense. ‘He could still be proud of you. I think he was in the end.’

‘Right.’

‘Anyone in Oxford’s position might have hated anyone in your position. Doesn’t mean he hates you personally. Just the way things panned out.’

‘How can he hate me, and it not be personal?’

‘You hate spiders, right. Doesn’t mean it’s personal with every one of them.’

‘I guess.’ Agloff wished he had the chance to talk to Oxford, but he vanished within a day of their return to Eden. Ran off across the Colony. Agloff had always got the impression even the whole of planet Earth was too small for Oxford Blue now. Colony Two was tainted, by Agloff, by Winter, by the memory of his wife. It was no wonder he ran.

‘He will forgive you eventually. He has to. You made a dumb mistake.’

‘You know I don’t talk about that.’

‘Agloff, you couldn’t have known about that pilgrim in the forest. Oxford knows that. What happened at Long Mile, what happened at the Underground was not your fault.’

He half-smiled, looked up at her from his shoes.

‘Ha. Irony of you telling me now not to feel guilty.’

Ariea turned back at him, amused, then brushed the dust of autumn leaves from her raincoat and pointed ahead. She reached a hand to his, closed around the gun and his eyes followed.

‘You came a long way from that forest. Look at you now. You couldn’t go twenty feet into a shrub. Now you’ve gone twenty miles.’ She carried on ahead through the wreckage. ‘I stand by what I said, Ag. Oxford would be proud of you. Marty too. I am.’

The thought of she and Marty warmed him.

‘Thanks.’

‘You don’t need to say thank you for every compliment.’

‘I like to though.’

Again, they stopped. They reached the end of the tracks, marked by buffers placed up against the wall.

‘What’s that?’

Ariea pointed to a stack of crates that had been arranged in step, up to an opening in the wall.

‘I guess they didn’t fall down that way.’

Ariea looked back at him. ‘Give me a leg up.’

She pointed him to the base crate, and he cupped his hands for her. At once, she tightened her rifle strap over her back and launched herself at Agloff. He sprung his arms up and she tumbled over, onto the container.

‘Gracefully done,’ she said, smirking, and reached a hand to hoist him up.

Awkwardly, they dragged themselves up the cascade of crates and through to the opening. Someone had left these here for convenience, and, judging by their neatness, recently. The station was occupied after all.

‘Oi, ahead, look!’ Ariea stared through the round hole in the wall and out the back of the station where rows of carriages were lain out against each other, as if in storage. Poking from the back, they saw a column of smoke climb through one of the larger carriages.

Agloff held his weapon aloft and scanned his sights for signs of movement. Ariea raised a hand for him to lower it.

‘Let’s get closer.’

‘What if they’re hostile?’

‘From what Kira’s said, there’s no traps about, no alarms, tripwires. If they were Ardul’s pilgrims, or even bandits, they roam in packs. We’d have seen someone. They’d have this place locked down else anyone can wander through.’ Ariea jumped from the gap in the wall to a cushion of grass outside the station. ‘And anyone did,’ she added, looking back up. ‘C’mon. We can handle ourselves’

Agloff sheepishly followed, falling askew in the bushes.

A faint path from the gap in the wall was traced by flattened grass, worn into the dirt. It led zig-zag between the shattered remains of carriages. It was almost like a graveyard.

Ariea pointed Agloff to the side and drew her rifle over her head. Agloff cupped his hands around his pistol and waited for her lead. His steps folded over the unkept grasses. For every step, his heart beat ten times over. But this was nothing he hadn’t done before.

The smokestack grew in his eyeline until the sun was obscured in its grey smear. Agloff heard the crackling of embers; the rasp of hushed breaths. Someone was here. Or several.

He took the left side, Ariea the right, where the carriage doors held it open from both sides. Agloff could spy nothing but rippling shadows, caught in a fire’s glow as he approached.

Agloff and Ariea swung round the sides of the carriage, their weapons poised on its occupants.

Instantly, they sighed, and their arms slackened.

Four children huddled around a fire, swallowed in a single blanket. The fire glinted in their wide eyes. Too wide even to blink. Two boys and two girls stared at Agloff, as if it was their only defence against the gun in his arm.

‘It’s okay,’ Ariea said.

The huddle turned to her in a sudden motion and Agloff scanned the place. He saw scraps of food smeared over the floor of the cabin. A bucket of water sat in the corner. Then his eyes landed on a blooded knife poking at his feet. He held it up to Ariea.

‘We’re not going to hurt you,’ she said. ‘We were just looking for people. Bad people. You’re safe now.’

The kids looked no more assured. Agloff knew these sorts were sharp, cynical. They survived on their wits. And Ariea knew as well as anyone it paid to be distrusting in Colony Two.

‘Where were you heading?’ Agloff said.

The heads flashed back.

‘North,’ a girl grunted.

‘Where north?’

They didn’t answer.

‘Where are you coming from?’

No answer.

Ariea knelt closer to them. ‘We can’t help you if you don’t talk to us.’ She smiled.

‘We don’t need help,’ the kid said.

Gently, Ariea went to her pocket and produced a silver necklace. Engraved onto the charm was the emblem of Fort Wishbone.

‘We’re not Winter. We’re looking for survivors of Winter. Strong people.’ She pulled back the blanket a fraction and Agloff caught Winter’s mark branded into one of their forearms. The boy shivered. ‘You must be so strong. So brave.’ Ariea smiled again. Agloff looked at her, proud.

‘We can help you,’ Agloff said. ‘But you have to tell us who you are.’

‘You mean come back with you?’

Agloff nodded. ‘If you want.’

Ariea held one’s hands. ‘There’s so many children from Eden at Wishbone. Boys and girls set free. They go to school, play along the shore. You could go to school, learn about anything. You can be anything. You don’t have to hide anymore.’

The second girl, a scrawny thing, with matted blonde hair, spoke up. ‘But we’re not from Eden. We’re not like those children. We’re different.’

Agloff looked at the brand on their arms.

‘What do you mean?’ Ariea asked.

‘We’re not free. We’re hiding, from Winter. A pilgrim was chasing us. We got ahead by a few hours so we waited it out here.’

‘But Winter’s gone from the North.’

‘That’s why we’re going there.’

‘Where are you from?’ Agloff repeated.

The oldest looking kid swallowed. ‘Stormdown. We’re Ardul’s kids.’

Agloff and Ariea exchanged furious stares.

‘When did you see this pilgrim?’

‘Ten miles back. We squeezed through a tunnel, got the drop on him.’

Ariea smiled again, then backed down from the carriage and ushered Agloff to join her. She spoke in hushed tones.

‘We can’t leave them here,’ she said.

‘We can’t exactly wait it out either. If Ardul’s pilgrims are pushing this far north, that’s no fluke. Jask cut his losses on runaways all the time. Not chase them halfway up the Colony.’

‘Well, Ardul’s not Jask, I guess.’

‘Still, no pilgrim has been seen north of the partition since the revolts. If what they’re saying is true, this matters, Ari.’

‘Do you believe them?’

Agloff looked at their huddle. They peered back. ‘I don’t know why they’d lie. They have the brand. Could be copycats, I guess.’

Colony Two was in no shortage of Winter’s denizens even in Jask’s death. Those who didn’t defect to Stormdown, roamed in vagrant packs from pairs up to families of hundreds or more. Outcasts from the Blocks who believed in Winter’s cause. There was no reason to assume the kids’ pursuer was from Stormdown, even if they were.

‘I don’t think so,’ Ariea said eventually. ‘They seem convinced. I guess we were dreaming to think killing Jask would make Winter go away. It just pushed them south.’

‘We did the right thing,’ Agloff reminded her.

‘If they’re from Stormdown and this… pilgrim… they’re from Stormdown too, they broke the partition. And if one can, two or three more will.’

‘We have to tell Riddis, right?’

Ariea nodded, stared at the kids.

Agloff knelt beside them, brushed a hand across their blanket to flatten its creases. ‘We’re going to call someone, to make sure you’re safe.’

The blonde girl’s eyes tightened. ‘Make us trust you.’

Agloff was stunted into silence. He had no answer to that. How could he. The world was cold and miserable before Jask. It was cold and miserable now. Trust in Colony Two was a blind currency. He couldn’t make them, as Winter could not compel them.

‘We can’t,’ Ariea said. ‘But trust that we’re not pilgrims. We’re not taking you back to Stormdown. Tell us your names. I’m Ariea. This is Agloff. We’re from Fort Wishbone.’ Ariea held her hand to her chest and looked at them.

Agloff could see in their faces they wanted to believe her, to give themselves over. But they knew that was a foolish way to live on these tracks.

‘I’m… Beet,’ the blonde girl said. The hesitation told Agloff it wasn’t her true name, but it was openness enough, he thought. The others followed with similarly impromptu titles: the other girl was Vey, the boys were Lung and Hester.

‘If you really don’t want to,’ Agloff said. ‘You don’t have to come, you can stay here.’

‘Really?’ Beet said.

‘We won’t force you, of course. It’s right you look out for yourself. We were on the road once, and no one could have told us different. You stick to the shadows, hope they miss you or stop looking. Everyone’s a threat, right.’

Beet leaned forward thoughtfully. The others seemed to look to her for leadership. ‘We’ll go Fort Wishbone.’

Agloff laughed. ‘What changed your mind?’

‘That you’d even consider offering letting us go tells me you’re honest.’

The kid was but ten or eleven, but she saw straighter than most. Agloff avoided the temptation to say more, to talk her out of it again. He unclipped a small boxy radio from his rucksack and vanished round the back of the carriage. He clicked in on and off until the buzz of static told him that someone was listening. The radios were short range, so Wishbone had folks set up at lookouts all the way out to its borders with Fort Spear and old Winter country.

Agloff ushered his message down the airways, repeating to the lookout what he and Ariea had discussed, what the girl had said. The lone pilgrim from Stormdown. The message would be shepherded all the way back to Wishbone, like Chinese whispers.

Within twenty minutes, riders would be on their way out.

The kids would be safe.

‘Someone is going to pick you up,’ Ariea said to them. She showed them the necklace again. ‘They’ll have this mark. You can trust them.

‘Why can’t you take us?’ Beet asked.

‘We—'

Ariea’s line of thought was cut. A twig snapped distantly, and their heads swung. They heard leaves patter underfoot. Slow, searching footsteps called across the station.

‘Oh god, no,’ Vey said.

‘You brought him here,’ Lung added.

‘No,’ Agloff insisted.

‘He followed you!’

Agloff leaned across them, held his hand against Lung’s mouth. ‘We’ll deal with it.’ Thoughtlessly, he strode to the bucket in the corner, swiped the water over the fire and it extinguished in a fizz.

‘Deal with it then,’ Beet said with feral eyes.

‘Stay here!’

Ariea nodded Agloff round the back of the carriage and they slipped into the graveyard of giants. The maze of carriages. They hadn’t brought the pilgrim here, of course. The kids did that. He wiped his pistol down against his raincoat and held it aloft to the carriages.

He passed frequent looks to Ariea, who led by her rifle.

They walked, feet tilted sideways. Agloff tempered his breaths, his eyes searched every sightline, just like Kira taught them. The other’s steps seemed to circle them, as though they were chasing each other.

Not looking up from her rifle, Ariea pointed he one way, and she the other. The other’s steps caught around the back of a large freight car.

Then they fell silent. Agloff listened to the whispers of wind, but he heard nothing, no breaths, no click of a weapon. From round the back, Ariea held a hand to halt him, then raised her fingers. Three. Two. One.

They swept around the angle and a man leapt at Ariea.

Her rifle went off as she was tipped backwards towards the grass. Agloff charged at him as he mobbed over her, scrambled at his back to haul him.

Like some moping gorilla, the other swung out and Agloff’s back crashed against the side of the carriage. Pain and noise swallowed him. He fell to the floor, grabbed his pistol from the long grass.

As he did, Ariea kicked the stranger off and his footing was briefly lost. Agloff squinted, then squeezed and a shot ripped through his shoulder. The stranger roared, shaking.

As Agloff and Ariea stood over him, he clutched his knife close and drew it against his neck before he could say a word.

They panted. Ariea leaned to roll the man over to hide the sight of him. She then touched hands to Agloff and gathered her rifle across her shoulder.

‘We should go… Agloff. We don’t know that there was just one.’

Agloff knelt beside the so-called pilgrim. He didn’t have the flowing grey cape he was used to. Rather, the man looked patchworked. His clothes were an assembly of other bits and pieces. Some of it Winter, some of it not. Agloff searched his pockets but found no hint of a firearm, just the blade he had used to end himself, and scraps of mugshots of the kids at the carriage.

‘Agloff.’

‘A minute.’

Agloff rolled the body back over and tore at his shirts. He saw Winter’s mark tattooed boldly on his chest. He wore it like a flag. Agloff then stood and handed Ariea’s the photos as he passed her.

‘This was Winter,’ he said. ‘They knew who they were looking for. The kids were targeted. Bandits wouldn’t go to the trouble to keep a few kids in check. Guessing they have an authority problem.’

‘Ardul was always the worst of the Apostles.’

‘Or just lucky. So far south the North couldn’t round him up like they did the others. Wetlands, Anna, the Nanda, Salamm all fell with Eden. Stormdown is just the last seat left standing.’

‘You saying we shouldn’t give Ardul credit?’ Ariea laughed.

Agloff kicked the body back over. ‘I mean look at this. A pilgrim travelling alone, barely armed, untrained. Rounding up kids when they got bigger problems. It’s Winter, but… Does that smell like Winter to you?’

‘None of it does. But one of them showing up this far north is still a problem.’

‘Should we wait with the kids?’ Agloff asked.

Ariea nodded stiffly. ‘You do that. I’ll get the horses round. Your shooting’s getting better, Ag.’ She looked at him.

‘Thanks.’

She smiled cutely. ‘I said you don’t need to say thank you for every compliment.’

Agloff smiled back at her. ‘Point taken.’