The next few days are the hardest yet. While Lucas and Xan stay behind to help Matthew, Yanto, Rissa, Ren, Amiyah, and I keep up a punishing pace.

  We walk for roughly sixteen hours a day, stopping only to relieve ourselves and refill our canteens when we can. We eat while we walk, talk little, and fall each night into an exhausted sleep that is never long enough.

  By the second day my legs feel more like water than muscle and bone, and my shoulders ache long after I lay down to rest. Rissa keeps a concerned eye on Ren, but the girl never visibly flags. She and Amiyah move with absolute focus, both their minds on Freya and the others they hardly dare hope they will see again.

  We reach Cabe’s Falls in the middle of the fourth day. I want to march straight to the Community Center but Rissa stops me.

  “If the Talavar were here now, it would be evident,” she says. “If it has already come, there’s nothing we can do. If it has not come yet, you might as well be rested to meet it.”

  I consider for a moment. Every fiber of me itches to go anyway. To ask around and verify. At least then I’ll know. But my body screams at the idea of taking one step farther than is absolutely necessary. For tonight at least, my body wins.

  With travel between stations as rare as it is, there’s not much business case for legitimate inns at most stations, but there are always a few rooms attached to other businesses or private habitations that visitors can rent. Yanto connects his slate to the local network and finds a few for us. They’re not all in the same place but they’re all within walking distance so Rissa and I head toward one, Ren and Amiyah toward another, and Yanto takes the third.

  I am stumbling like a drunk by the time we get the door code and asleep almost before I’ve removed my boots.

  I wake to the clashing scents of fresh coffee and my own body odor. It wasn’t as noticeable on the road but in this clean room, on these clean sheets, the stench is powerful.

  The scent of coffee comes from a tray near the door where a carafe and two mismatched cups have been left by our hosts. Rissa emerges from the washroom naked and smelling of soap, her dark hair wrapped in a towel and piled on her head.

  “Oh thank the stars,” she says, spotting the coffee. Then, wrinkling her nose in my direction, offers “it’ll still be hot when you get out.”

  Happy to take the hint, I head to the washroom myself, stripping off my filthy clothes as I go. It’s tiny, but stocked with towels and soap, tooth cream, and hot running water. I sit down in the shower and let the warmth soak into my aching muscles for as long as politeness to my host will allow and then a little longer. I wonder if the recent deluge accounts for the abundance of available water. Rural stations often collect rainwater for use in plumbing and other luxuries. When I emerge, skin red from scrubbing, I find Rissa wrapped in a purple knit robe. A matching one is laid out on my bed and I step into it gratefully. It’s simple and warm and clean and in my opinion far outshines the luxuries I’ve heard described at Citadel hotels.

  Rissa hands me a cup of coffee and returns to combing her hair with her fingers. I watch her for a while, wondering at her calm and her continued capacity for the consideration of others. We have been so focused these past few days on the impending danger to Ren and Amiyah’s family that her own scorchingly recent tragedy has been pushed nearly out of my mind. It hasn’t left hers, however; not even for a moment. I see it in the restless movement of her eyes, the shuddering breath she thinks I don’t hear, the constant tremble of her hands.

  She closes her eyes to sip her coffee and I consider whether to say something. I mentally flail about for what that something might be, but she speaks before it comes to me.

  “Yanto sent a message. He said to meet at the restaurant down the street this morning so that we can decide on our next move.”

  “Why didn’t you say so? Did he find out about the train?”

  I jump to my feet grimace at my clothes piled beside the bed before pulling them hastily on.

  “He said he’ll update us when we get there.”

  “Well blighted blood, let’s go then.”

  “I’ll come with you to the restaurant,” Rissa says, surprising me. It had never occurred to me she wouldn’t come. “But after that…”

  I pause my rushed preparations, heart sinking.

  “Of course. You were on your way to your children,” I finish for her, feeling like an idiot for making her be the one to suggest parting ways. “Are they far from here?”

  “Next town over. Black Warden. I really considered staying with you all. I want to help Ren and Amiyah, but…” She looks at me with dark eyes thick with pain, and… something else. It almost looks like terror.

  “Are you afraid something has happened to them?” I wouldn’t blame her, after all she’s lost.

  She shakes her head. “It’s not anything like that. You’ll think I’m a terrible mother but… I wanted to stay with you. I’d rather walk for another month than have to face them and tell them about their father.”

  The admission brings with it the flood of tears I have been waiting for since the attack. She has never let any of us see her woundedness and we have all pretended not to hear her muffled sobs in the night.

  I wish I were Sakari right now, or even Lucas. Anyone who would know the right thing to say. Hell, even Ren might work. She’d tell an insensitive and ill-timed joke and it would be exactly what was needed somehow.

  I want to reassure her that she’s the best mother I’ve ever known, which would be true but probably not helpful. I want to take her in my arms and let her weep into my shoulder, but my body doesn’t know how to be anything but stiff in moments like this.

  I sit beside her and put an awkward arm around her shoulders, grasping wildly for something to say and coming up empty-handed.

  Somehow, this seems to help. Maybe she just needed to hear herself say the words out loud. After a moment her shoulders still and her body relaxes. She dries her tears with the robe and surprises me with a gentle kiss on the cheek.

  “We’d better get dressed.”

  The moment I see Yanto, I know something is wrong.

  He’s sitting at the table alone, scowling at his slate and chewing his lower lip. My heart plunges, stonelike into the depths of my fears. All morning I have been carefully avoiding any thought of the Talavar, but when he looks up at me, I don’t need to ask what’s happened.

  “We’re too late,” I say flatly.

  “I’m sorry, kid.”

  I sink into a chair, numb. I knew this could happen. I knew, in fact, that it was the most likely thing to happen, and yet I have never allowed myself to truly entertain it as a possibility. For so many reasons, missing the Talavar was simply not an option.

  The train schedule, however, is as impervious as ever to individual needs and desires, and we are too late.

  “Okay,” says Rissa calmly. “So you stay a few days to rest, get supplies, go on to Antissa. That was always the plan.”

  “That was always the backup plan, in case the real plan didn’t work. But the real plan was the real plan because it was supposed to fucking work.” I hate the note of panic in my voice. When Rissa reaches out to squeeze my hand I yank it away.

  I know I don’t have a right to be this upset. Not when Ren and Amiyah have so much at stake and when Rissa has already lost so much. But the part of me for which Antissa was the primary motivation is conspicuously small. The Tali who has control of my voice right now is desperate to clear my name, to find Charlie again, to foil Nevalya, and maybe even have my revenge.

  “But it didn’t.” Rissa’s voice is patient, reasoning with a stubborn child. “So now we must adapt.”

  “What do you mean we?” I snap. “You’re not even coming.” She draws back as if from a slap, a flash of genuine hurt in her eyes.

  “Shit,” I mutter, disliking how my handiwork looks, written in pain across her face. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “We’re all tired and upset,” she says and pats my hand. She’s being kind but when I look up at her, she looks away and I want to kick myself. I’m not typically so mean, especially to people who don’t deserve it and I don’t like how it feels.

  Before I can say anything else a waiter appears with a large tray of food. Yanto apparently ordered for the table. I want to say I’ve lost my appetite after the morning’s news and my own outburst, but I am ravenous, and the food is fresh—not an envelope of rice and beans in sight.

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  We are all silent for the next few moments, focusing on the first real food we’ve eaten in days and lost in our own private thoughts.

  When Ren and Amiyah finally arrive, the three of us silently agree to let them enjoy their meal as best they can. When we can put it off no longer, we deliver the news.

  Not surprisingly, they don’t take it much better than I did. Ren looks like she might throw up and I wonder whether letting her eat a half pound of lab-grown eggs and sausage before telling her it might be too late to save her family was perhaps a stupid move.

  Rissa once more attempts to pull us back from the brink of hysteria by being relentlessly sensible.

  “Yanto, have you had time to consider what you might charge to continue on to Antissa?” she asks.

  “Half what I charged for the trip here.” He looks defiant, daring me to be outraged that he’s charging at all. I am more than ready to rise to the challenge.

  “That’s fair,” Rissa says calmly. I turn my livid gaze to her.

  “He wants to charge them a small fortune to save their family and that’s… fair?”

  “Yanto is not here as our friend, we are his clients. We can’t expect him to work for free.”

  “I can’t pay that,” Amiyah says miserably. “I can’t even guarantee I’ll be able to pay when we get there.”

  “So we go on our own.” Ren’s voice is determined even if there’s fear behind her eyes.

  Rissa’s smiles warmly at the girl. “Khalid and I have some money set aside for… well, for plans we no longer have. I’d be glad to finance your trip.”

  “What do you mean?” Ren asks, alarmed. “You’re not coming?”

  Rissa shakes her head. “My children are waiting for me. But I’ll make my own travel arrangements from here once you’re safely on the road.”

  “Can Ren stay with you?” Amiyah asks, causing Ren to round on her with such ferocity I’m surprised she doesn’t flinch.

  “I am not staying!”

  “Yes you are,” Amiyah replies in a tone that brooks no argument. “If I make it to Antissa in time, the best I can do is warn them and maybe get a few people out of town. More likely, I’m walking into my own death. I am not taking you to yours.”

  “Well you’re not fucking leaving me behind.” That note of steel is back in Ren’s voice.

  Rather than respond, Amiyah turns to me.

  “What was it like? The city you and Lucas found?”

  I pause, unsure where she’s going with this. “It was unspeakable,” I say at last. “A nightmare.”

  Amiyah nods. “You told us that, but I need to really understand. What did the bodies look like? What did it smell like? Be detailed.”

  I glance first at Rissa, then at Yanto for rescue but neither speaks. Maybe they want to know, too.

  With a sigh, I yield. I tell them not just about the bodies piled against the walls but about those hung from the clothing wire. I tell them about the sunken faces and flaking skin, and the clothes that swallowed them.

  “Were there children?” Amiyah asks.

  I nod, mutely. I am not going to describe the tiny bodies thrown on the pile. I am not going to talk about that.

  Amiyah turns to Ren, whose eyes are wide and watery. “If it’s too late, that’s what Antissa will be like. Only it will be our friends and family, not nameless corpses. Do you understand?”

  Ren’s eyes flash and she lifts her chin defiantly. Her voice only trembles a little when she says, “At least then I’ll know. Besides, there’s no reason to assume it’s too late.”

  “It’s too late no matter what!” Amiyah snaps. Other patrons begin to glance in our direction at the raised voices. A clearly pallridden young man at a nearby table winces as if the sound of nearby conflict brings him pain.

  “Why are you all ignoring that?” she demands. “If we get there before the decommissioning what are we going to do? Hide the whole town? Move them? Even if we could, how long would it survive with no train stops, no supplies?”

  “Then we say goodbye!” Ren fires back. “We spend our last days or weeks or months or whatever we have with Freya! Don’t you want to see her again?”

  Amiyah’s sigh is half sob. She touches Ren’s cheek softly, and brushes her hair behind her ears.

  “I promised her I’d take care of you, Ren. I can’t just bring you home to die.”

  “Then we leave again, and take as many people as we can with us,” Ren says stubbornly, gesturing toward me and Rissa and Yanto. “They’re not staying. We’ll go home, warn everyone, and leave when they leave. Maybe other people do the same. We can’t move the whole town, but surely a lot of them can find somewhere to go.”

  “Or,” I interject, a thought that has been forming in the back of my mind starting to take shape, “We keep trying for Plan A. Stop it before it starts.”

  This gets Amiyah’s attention and I inwardly wince at the spark of hope in her eyes. My plan is, at best, a massive stretch. The fact that it is also a way to serve my own interests is, I tell myself sternly, irrelevant. It’s the only chance Antissa has got, whether it helps me or not.

  “Yanto,” I say, “is there a way to bypass the next few stations and go straight to the Citadel?”

  He shrugs. “I’ve never tried it, but… maybe. I could plot a route on a map, anyway.”

  “The two of you go on to Antissa with Yanto and do like Ren says—warn who you can, take who you can, and leave with Yanto. Even if you just make it back here, that’s something,” I say to the girls. “In the meantime, I will head to the Citadel. If I can cut across and skip the next few stations I might stand a chance of making it there before the Talavar. If I can just find the Conductor, I know he’ll help.”

  “Why would he help?” Lucas asks. “He’s the one who told you about the decommissioning to begin with. You don’t think he knows what it entails?”

  I gape at him. “You think Charlie is aware that the decommissioning teams who claim to help people move to new stations and find new jobs actually murder them and take their blood?”

  “I mean…”

  “He doesn’t know,” I cut him off, stony in my certainty. “If he knew, he’d have done something about it already. And when I tell him, he’ll stop it.”

  “Hold on,” Yanto holds up a hand. “I said I could plot a course on the map, not that you could get there on your own. You’ll need supplies, a travel agent, a bodyguard. I have no idea what you’ll find along the way. More antler-folk? Something worse? There’s a reason most folk follow the general path of the train tracks when they travel.”

  “I can help with the supplies,” Rissa says, repeating her earlier offer. She points at Ren and Amiyah. “If you’re leaving for Antissa you’ll need to go as soon as possible, so maybe we find you a new bodyguard here in Cabe’s Falls. Then Tali can wait for Xan to catch up, and take her along to the Citadel.”

  “I don’t like it,” Yanto says. “There are way too many what-ifs, and maybes. Things fall apart quick when the maybes stack up like that. Besides, there’s a reason Xan only works with me and vice versa.”

  For a moment I think that’s all he will say. Then I see the look of anguished hope on Ren’s face, and I see Yanto see it as well, and I know we’ve won.

  We spend the rest of the day shopping. Rissa, to no one’s surprise, is a world-class haggler. By mid-afternoon she’s acquired tents, a small heater, a few fresh sets of clothing, and a vast array of meal envelopes for the Antissa crew. She adds trail mix, dried apple slices, and a small, motorized cart that can carry gear for short distances in lieu of another bal-ghoro.

  Yanto assures her the terrain between here and Antissa should be more hospitable to a wheeled vehicle than the road here from Nokon, and the merchant assures her the cart’s battery is equipped with a legitimate mod and will last at least two months—much longer than they should need it. Even at the remarkable prices she deftly achieves, it’s a lot to fund on her own, but she seems relieved to say goodbye to the money. I wonder what she and Khalid had been saving for that became nothing when he died.

  Yanto sends a rough map to my slate. The world has changed too much since the Pall for old maps to apply anymore, and no new ones have ever officially been made. That would run contrary to the Citadel’s efforts to discourage travel and communication between stations. The thought is like a spike of ice in my spine.

  We’ve always been told the Citadel kept the stations relatively siloed to prevent another outbreak like the Pall. I’ve always taken it for granted that it was a necessary step but now, in light of recent revelations, it takes on a darker tone. It’s certainly convenient to the Citadel that there’s no quick way to send messages from station to station. It must make it easier, for example, to keep things like the murder of an entire station full of citizens under wraps.

  Whatever the reason, the result is that Yanto’s map is pieced together from his own previous travels, with spots marked where the stations should be.

  Tracks between the stations are noted to his best approximation, so I can see the various possible routes the Talavar might take. No matter which one it chooses, there are at least three stops between Cabe’s Falls and the Citadel.

  Yanto draws a straight line with his finger on my slate screen, connecting the two directly. “As the crow flies, you could go straight there and bypass every stop on the way.”

  I frown. “As the what flies?”

  “It’s just an old saying.” He dismisses the question. “The point is, if you could fly straight there with no obstacles, you’d just need to maintain a straight Northwest trajectory.”

  “And assuming we can’t fly and there are obstacles?”

  “Then you still need to maintain a Northwest trajectory. It just won’t be as easy.”

  “And you have no idea what obstacles there might be?”

  He studies the map in silence for a moment before answering. “None that aren’t noted already. If it’s near a station and I know about it, I’ve added it.” He points to a darker area on the map east of where we are now. “There, for example, the land gets pretty swampy. If you wanted to go that way, I would advise against it. But for the course you plan to take…”

  He shrugs apologetically.

  “Alright.” I try not to let my fear escape in my voice. “I’ll make notes to add to your map as I go, yeah?”

  He claps me on the shoulder.

  “Uh… one more thing,” I say. It’s my turn to sound apologetic as I gesture with my slate. “I’m sending you what I can to cover the trip here. I don’t have the whole amount.”

  Yanto’s eyes widen. “Were you planning to rip me off this whole time?”

  “No! That is… I knew I didn’t have enough, but I was going to figure it out. I’m still going to figure it out!”

  “I suggest you do,” Yanto says somewhat ominously.

  He, Amiyah, and Ren decide to leave as soon as preparations are finished, even though that will mean starting their journey at the end of the day. I would rather they wait another night and get some rest before setting off, but Ren is buzzing with pent up anxiety, and I suspect won’t be able to sleep either way.

  She hugs me tightly when we say goodbye and I promise her we will talk again soon, having no idea if that is true.

  I am more anxious than ever to get back to the train now that there is even more at stake than clearing my own name. Besides, the Talavar is the only entity that can connect to any station network to send messages without being in the 2-3 mile radius that is the maximum most networks can manage. From there I can find out whether my friends arrive safely and in time to save Antissa.

  I’m a little surprised and even more moved when Amiyah embraces me too, albeit slightly less violently.

  “I’m counting on you,” she says and my gut twists.

  “I’ll do everything I can.”

  Tomorrow, Rissa and I will do our own shopping and preparations—she for the last leg of her journey, I for my race against the train.

  “Rissa,” I say softly as I lie in bed in our rented room later.

  “Hm?”

  “I’m sorry about earlier. I was an asshole.”

  The silence hangs in the dark room for a long time. Finally breaks it. “Yeah. You were.”

  I cast about for a response that doesn’t sound like trying to make her forgive me for my own sake. I say nothing.

  She takes mercy on me anyway. “Don’t let it weigh on you. We are all assholes sometimes.”

  I try to picture Rissa, who spent her whole day and her own funds caring for people she barely knows while mourning her recently deceased husband, being mean to anyone. “Oh yeah? When are you an asshole?”

  “Ask my children. They tell me all the time. ‘Matriya,’ they say, ‘you are an asshole.’”

  I snort with laughter. “I do not believe that for one second.”

  “They do. I even found my daughter’s journal once and she had written ‘I hat my mom,’ over and over for several pages.”

  “Wow. What did you do to warrant so much hat-red?”

  “I didn’t let her eat a live spider.”

  “Oh. Well in that case I stand corrected. You are for sure an asshole.”