7

“Caru.”

A hand pressed against his shoulder and shook his upper body. Dreams shattered against the light of early dawn. Something about a cup? Odd that such a simple image would stick in his mind. Of course, the dream also came with memories of having his wings stripped from his back, a dream of waking up in the middle of the horror of the demented surgery. The dream brought memories of flying through blue skies, wind ripping through hair and feathers, losing his sight as he soared through a dense, wet cloud cover, feeling the flood of aether as he flew with wings spread wide.

He hated the dreams of flying almost as much as those of the surgery. They only deepened his sense of loss when they passed. Yet those were the same dreams that begged him to sleep again, to return to his life of flight and aether, to forget what those damned Seranians had done. So easy to close his eyes and drift…

“Caru! Wake up!”

This time his eyes snapped open to see the blonde woman kneeling over him, hand pressed against his shoulder and urging him to wake. He plucked her hand away as he sat up, leaning on his elbows. Kimke shifted backwards, sitting on her heels, hands folded neatly in her lap. “You’re quite the deep sleeper,” she said, smiling.

Caru laughed, and laughing felt strange. He thought he’d forgotten how. “I’ve been accused of worse,” he said.

As they both stood, Kimke reached behind where she sat and threw a soft bundle at Caru’s chest. “What’s this?” he asked, pulling the bundle before him.

“Clothes. You’re going to stand out if you keep wearing that ratty coat.”

He unfolded the bundle and examined the garments. Short sleeved shirt, dyed gray. Black leather vest. Simple brown breeches. “Let me guess,” he said, tossing his coat and old shirt to one side. “You got these with a wink and a smile?”

Kimke laughed softly. “Of course not. Even pretty girls don’t get things for free when men think she already has a man. No, I stole these. I got up in the middle of the night and found clothes left on a line to dry. I guess the owner forgot them when the sun set.”

“Sly devil,” Caru said, looping his arms through the vest and lacing it all together. A vest with buttons would have been more practical and easier to work, but lacing was the more fashionable choice. If nothing else, getting dressed was easier without wings in the way.

Hardly a fair trade.

“If you say so. I’ll wait down below while you finish up here.” With that, Kimke climbed down the ladder propped against the building and descended out of sight. Caru swapped his pants—the ones he wore while imprisoned, no less—and put on the shoes that he himself had stolen from the drunkard two nights ago. He smiled, thinking it might be unfair to chide Kimke for her theft when he was no better. Taking advantage of some poor drunk like that! The nerve!

“Feel any better?” Kimke asked as Caru stepped away from the ladder’s bottom rung.

The clothes felt a size too small, the shirt tight around his chest, the pants leaving his ankles bare. Otherwise, the clothing was certainly better than the stinking coat.

“Like a new man,” he said. “Now you didn’t happen to steal some poor man’s breakfast, did you?”

Kimke planted her fists on her hips and made a show of pouting before grinning. “I doubt either of us are hardened criminals just yet.”

“No,” Caru said, strolling to the alley’s end, “but I do think we have careers ahead of us as petty thieves.”

Kimke jogged up to Caru’s side and stuffed a hand into the thigh pocket of her short dress. When she brought it back out, she revealed a meager handful of copper coins and jingled them together. “I didn’t steal these. They were lying on the ground, and I happened to notice them here and there while getting our clothes. Amazing how much money people are willing to leave on the ground instead of bending over to pick it up.”

“I guess I’ll let that one slide then.”

“Hmph. I thought if anyone would be fine with stealing from humans, it would be you.”

—

Less than two hours later, the pair stood at the entrance to the capital’s train depot. A breakfast of pork and dried fruit fell well short of filling, but it at least gave them the strength to cross the city. Though they both could have eaten more, they agreed it would be better to keep some of Kimke’s cache of coin on hand. It could be a while before they would run across more.

Caru again stood in the shadow of Blood-Emperor Theop’s statue, glancing at the Seranian leader’s image in disgust while restraining himself from defacing the thing. Sun-Blessed indeed! He turned to Kimke instead, trying to blend into the crowd as a couple having a simple conversation. Were they standing too closely? Should he touch her arm? She was attractive in her own way, but it felt awkward standing so close with someone he wasn’t romantically involved with. Then again, whatever helped the illusion.

“There she is,” Caru said, nodding toward a bench at the next entrance. No pointing. Mieta sat on the bench, hands folded in her lap as she sat waiting. Someone approached her, spoke a few words, and she hesitated before pointing in the opposite direction. The person bowed and then left. She visibly relaxed before straightening.

“I’ll go talk to her,” Kimke said. “She’ll notice you coming.” With that, Kimke was gone, and Caru was left standing in the shade of the statue to the Blood Emperor. He turned away from the statue so that he could study the station in more detail.

It was a large structure, designed to admit two lines of extra wide passenger trains at any time. On either end of the station were large entryways that would allow for some of the taller trains to enter, those with two-story cars. The station itself was about a quarter-mile long, although some of the trains were more than twice that. A high, smoked glass ceiling allowed sunlight through.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

At the edges of the station stood nearly as many shops and stalls as one would find in the Trade Plaza. Vendors barked their wares at the huge influx of people at the station today after a long closure the day before.

Streetlamps dotted the boarding platforms, where people were now exiting the train, mostly seeming irritated that their arrival had been delayed. From the train, they were routed into a large walkway that would empty out into the station’s luggage collection, where they would retrieve their things before departing into the city. Cries arose from the porters as those from the train tossed lighter luggage to those waiting on the platform.

More people waited in a series of long queues to get onto the train, separated by long ropes into lines that terminated in metal gates. When the exiting passengers had cleared the platform, the gates were opened, and more surged forward into the train. It seemed many people were eager to leave; rumors must have been making rounds throughout the city.

He turned to see Kimke approaching. She smiled, but it quickly faded. As she sat next to him on the bench, Caru looked up to see Mieta still sitting alone at hers. Kimke saw his expression and said, “She thought it would be better if we stayed separated for now. She knows you’re here, and she still hasn’t cried out for security, so it doesn’t feel like a trap, at least not from her.”

Caru nodded. “And the plan?”

Kimke withdrew a ticket, about two inches wide and three inches long. “She sends her regards and this ticket. She bought four tickets for a sleeper suite.”

Caru looked down at the ticket to see that the suit number was 327, and that it was for a train departing for Lieve—the next large city to the west—in around three hours. One adult, one way, and For the Blood! printed along the bottom edge.

“She said to take this time to look for our third, and that she would hold onto the ticket in case we find them.”

Caru slipped the ticket into his vest pocket and stood.

—

Three hours later, Caru crossed the threshold from the station platform to the waiting train. When his feet pressed onto the wooden interior floor, he stabilized himself by gripping a mounted brass rod before turning around. He offered his free hand to help Kimke and Mieta board. Kimke’s gaze bored into Caru’s eyes as she boarded, and her grip was tighter than he’d expected. Mieta had sat quietly on a depot bench for an hour without raising an alarm, only rising to meet them when the train pulled into the station, but Caru could still sense Kimke’s distrust. If Mieta hadn’t raised a commotion by the time they boarded the train, she would probably keep her word and stay quiet.

Searching for the third erman had been fruitless, but at least Caru could say that they’d tried. It felt callous to leave them behind, but fleeing the city was paramount, and the net would only tighten the longer they stayed.

Mieta gripped his hand lightly and kept her head down to make sure her feet cleared the gap. Caru worried he might have held her hand too tightly, but he pulled her through to the inside. With an arm against her back, he ushered the woman into the car’s hallway to make room for the next passengers in line.

Although passenger trains such as this were extraordinarily wide, the hall itself felt narrow, even cramped, as it was lined by sleeper booths on either side. A look back toward the engine compartment showed a much roomier car, lined with rows of padded benches instead of private cabins. A series of glass-enclosed lanterns cast the train interior in a faint and flickering light. The train seemed especially dark when entering, leaving the high afternoon sunlight behind. Caru blinked his eyes a few times and quickly adjusted to the dim lighting.

He examined the ticket from Mieta, confirming the cabin number scribbled in the appropriate blank. Here it is,” he said, stopping at a simple door engraved with 327. He cracked the door open and followed the women inside, turning to take one last look at the hallway. A cluster of men boarded with several pieces of luggage, but no one seemed to notice him. Something tickled in the back of his memory, but he couldn’t place it. Perhaps his mind was still racing a bit from encountering Mieta. As an especially wide-shouldered man looked his way, Caru nodded abruptly and retreated to the cabin, closing and locking the door behind him.

Perhaps the luggage had bothered him, or rather the lack of his own luggage. He worried that they looked suspicious without stacks of bags and suitcases. Perhaps anyone curious enough to ask would accept a story that they didn’t intend to stay in the western Seranian city of Lieve for more than a day or two before returning to the capital. Then again, several other passengers probably only had the clothes on their backs as well. Simply people wanting to get away from the capital for a few days in light of the recent attacks, nothing more.

Nothing more.

The cabin felt small, but surely they all did. A small closet was embedded in the wall to his right. Four beds—two on each side of the cabin, one atop the other—were folded against the wall, exposing foldout chairs built into their bottoms. Kimke had the chairs extended while Mieta was unloading her own light pack of luggage into the closet. By the time Caru closed the door and paused to breathe for a moment, Mieta had finished emptying her luggage and had sat down on a seat across from Kimke.

He felt the weight of his decision as he seated himself next to Kimke, their knees almost spanning the narrow gap to brush against Mieta’s. They turned to the human woman, races divided along the cabin’s center line.

Mieta opened her mouth, but Kimke raised a hand to silence her. “Time to speak later,” she said. Mieta nodded, lowering her head and examining the wooden floor between her feet. Kimke softened her tone as she leaned forward. “Sorry,” she said. “Please, I just need a few more moments to think.”

“I understand,” Mieta said, looking up again and easing more comfortably into her seat.

They sat in silence, none wanting to look at anyone else. Practicing speeches, Caru thought.

Minutes passed before the train whistle shrieked, and then the wheels moved along the rails, chuffing with increasing rhythm. The scene through the cabin window shifted as the train pushed forward. As it left the depot, it angled downward slightly, dipping into the western channel, one of four that now quartered the capital. When the government first installed the railway into the capital, it did so by carving large open trenches along cardinal directions below street level so as not to disrupt the city above more than necessary. These channels were wider than any river channel would have been though, wide enough to accommodate two of the wide passenger trains side by side. The view turned to that of a slate gray wall with periodic bursts of shale as they passed beneath city bridges spanning the channels.

It pushed west toward the city of Lieve and, more importantly, away from Garenesh. It wouldn’t get them out of Serana, but it would bring them closer to Edaria.

With a final pulse of shadow, the train was beneath and outside the western city wall. The densely packed buildings within the capital were replaced with sparser housing and shops that made up the western gate suburbs. The rail angled upward until the channel was even with the countryside, and then they were traveling in the open. Suburbs and outer city faded further until only farmland remained, broad expanses covering the countryside.

Caru had never moved so quickly along the ground before. Even with years of flying behind him, the view through the window was nothing short of fantastic. Distant mountains remained stoic and unmoving while nearer trees and the occasional farmstead zipped by with blinding speed. It was exhilarating to watch, to move at these speeds again.

Is this how people travel without aether or Portals? he thought. Without wings? Edaria had its own rail network, but it was mostly used for freight shipments rather than passenger travel. There still was passenger travel over longer distances, but Caru had never used it. Being erman came with graceful ease of travel. He suppressed a sigh, wondering if this would have to be the kind of thing he would have to grow accustomed to.

Caru turned away from the window and saw that Kimke and Mieta stared out as well, entranced. Perhaps he wasn’t the only one who hadn’t ridden a train before.

The women broke their reveries, turning to look across the cabin at each other again. Caru exhaled, not realizing he’d been holding his breath.

“Now,” Kimke said. “I think we need an explanation.”