The few days after leaving a station are my favorite. I love the rhythm of my life on the Talavar—the lull between stations and the respite from boredom that the stops offer.

  I love meeting people at the stations, and putting in a few days of hard work and then getting back on the train and spending the next few days or weeks watching Salus pass by, enjoying the gentle motion of the train beneath my feet.

  “What’s that?” Charlie asks over my shoulder. I’m at the observatory window, ignoring the view and examining my new trinket.

  We’ve just left Palam’s Peak, a tiny outpost in the middle of nowhere, nestled at the base of a tall, bleak mountain that stands alone against the sky. Ever since my conversation with Bartlett, I find myself looking at every little curiosity shop I find at a stop for something I think my mother would have liked. At this one I found a little blue stone with a tiny carving of a tree sprouting from it, and bought it on impulse.

  I’m focused so intently on it that Charlie’s question startles me and I almost drop it.

  “I don’t know, really. Just a thing I found in a shop at the Peak. It spoke to me.”

  “Oh?” he gives me an unreadable look.

  I shrug, suddenly embarrassed. “I just find it interesting, the things people make at different stops.”

  “Well, it’s good you got something from Palam’s Peak while you could,” he says, leaning sideways against the window. “That’s probably our last time stopping there.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “Decommissioning?” I should have expected it. These little remote outposts are always in danger of getting taken off the map.

  “Decommissioning,” he confirms.

  I grimace, thinking of the people living there. “That can’t be easy.”

  Charlie shrugs. “It’s not that bad, actually. They keep families together and offer everyone multiple destination options to choose from. Find them new jobs, help them get set up. Sometimes it’s better for them if they can get to a bigger station with more resources.”

  I’m glad to hear it, but I can’t imagine having to pack up my entire life and start over. It doesn’t sound fun.

  “Seems like there are more every year.” My tiny stone-tree feels a little sad now. Something about owning a piece of a little town that will no longer exist by this time next year deepens my contemplative mood.

  “Not really,” Charlie says. “There are only two on the schedule this year: Palam’s Peak and Antissa. Just feels like a lot when they’re close together, I think.”

  He’s probably right. I’ll have to remember to buy something in Antissa when we stop there, though. It feels wrong to let a whole station fade without doing something small to remember it by.

  Our next stop is Nokon City which, despite being among the longest and most tiring stops on the Talavar’s route, is also my favorite.

  There are few places outside the Citadel that can still be truly called a city. Most stops are outposts at best. A few qualify as small towns, boasting a functional train platform and a decently sized community gathering hall.

  In Nokon, the train speeds through the center of dense apartment buildings and crowded market squares before reaching the platform, which is inside a large artificial tunnel built of stone and gloriously arched at its peak. Inside, the tracks are embedded in the middle of a wide street, with shops and market stalls packed into its walls on either side.

  Unlike the Citadel, with its pristinely uniform street corners and its scowling mansions and gleaming gates, Nokon is bursting with color, noise, and life.

  Work days for the Talavar crew are demanding here. It is impossible to draw blood from more than a fraction of the city’s population in the five days we are scheduled to stay, but we’re required to do as many draws and from as diverse a set of citizens as possible. To compensate for the extra labor and long hours, Charlie lets the passengers have the evenings to ourselves to explore the city at our leisure, a privilege of which I take full advantage.

  I often wander farther from the platform here than at any other stop, relishing the chance to disappear into the city’s rhythms.

  The tunnel bazaar extends for about a mile past the platform and boasts enough diversions to keep me occupied for a good while. But outside the tunnel, the real city begins with its winding alleys littered with little restaurants and shops, smashed together with apartment buildings, washing lines criss-crossing the narrow strips of visible sky. It is this part of the city to which I am truly drawn. I don’t know why I find the people here so fascinating; it’s probably something base in me that sees anyone living very differently than I do as alien.

  By the last night of our stay I’m far enough from the station to warrant paying for a bed. I find one in a tiny hostel; the last bunk in a room that is also the temporary residence of five other lodgers. Sakari will scold me later, reminding me for the hundredth time that it is dangerous to go wandering around Nokon alone.

  I’ll have to get up early in order to reach the train before departure, but for tonight, I am tucked away in a warm bunk listening to the talk and laughter of the other boarders.

  Four of them, a group about my own age who tease each other with the familiarity of old friends, seem to be traveling together. I wonder whether they are on an errand that took them to the other side of the sprawling city, or if they came from somewhere else entirely.

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  Their conversation yields no real information but I start to make some sense of them after a while. The short, red-haired boy called Callum is considered by the others to have better luck attracting women and men alike than any of the others. I start thinking of him as Nokon’s Tiny Casanova. The occupant of the bunk above his, a boy with skin about as dark as mine, much darker eyes, and a quick, bright smile, is the Cheerful One.

  The bunk next to Callum’s belongs to a third member of their party—a girl who can’t be older than 14 with bright hair and an irreverent manner I find endearing. Her right arm ends just above where the elbow would be, and I wonder whether she can’t afford to mod it or just doesn’t mind. Sitting next to her on the same bunk with a casual arm slung over her shoulders is Amiyah, who strikes me as the group’s leader though I can’t say why. She has a sharp, watchful face and for all the casualness in her demeanor, I get the feeling she’d punch anyone who so much as looked at the younger girl the wrong way.

  I barely notice the other lodger. They are little more than a dark lump, curled on their side with their back to the rest of the room, apparently asleep.

  I lie back on my bunk and open a book, and hope to drift off to the sound of the four friends talking.

  “I’m not the one who made us stop every hour to take a piss,” Amiyah is saying in response to some jab thrown her way.

  “Yeah well, all that beer had to go somewhere,” says Nokon’s Tiny Casanova. “I drank my weight in it. And then I had to drink Ren’s weight in it too!”

  Okay, so Ren must be the younger girl.

  “Yeah, like that was hard. Ren’s tiny. She’d be completely demolished by what you drink before breakfast.”

  “Callum has to do that, otherwise he has no excuse for some of the things that crawl out of his bed,” comes the retort from the Cheerful One.

  “Excuse me,” Casanova shoots back. “Those are people not things, and it’s not my fault you’re so shallow you can’t have a good time.”

  He’s got a point. Finding the book’s contents less interesting than the conversation, I turn my full attention to the group. Amiyah, leaning forward to retrieve something from her bag, catches my eye and winks. Embarrassed, I snap my eyes back to the book and pretend not to notice.

  “He’s not wrong, Noah,” Amiyah says to the Cheerful One, and I can hear the grin in her voice. “And if you weren’t such a snob, you might get a few more bites yourself.” When I glance back at her, she’s peeling open a mod—off-market, I guess, based on the yellow symbol on its packaging. I’ve seen it before in Nokon—some illegal mod dealer’s attempt at branding. The mod itself is a transparent strip of something that Amiyah gently applies to Ren’s shoulder.

  I’m too curious about this to take in Noah’s retort. Whatever he’s saying, it’s cut shortby the appearance of the hostel proprietor appearing in the doorway.

  “There’s food in the kitchen,” says the tall, sour-looking man who scans us all with open suspicion as if we might be hiding silverware in the pillowcases. His eyes linger on Ren, then flick down to the open mod package lying on the bed next to her. Instantly his expression takes on a predatory gleam.

  “Something wrong with her?”

  “With who?” Amiyah looks around the room, eyes wide with faux innocence. I follow the proprietor’s gaze to the girl, wondering what the man sees that bothers him. Other than the stump of her right arm, I don’t see anything unusual.

  Then I do see it. In the slight shake of her hands and faint sheen of sweat on her skin. Skin that’s a little too pale. Ren is in the early stages of the Pall, but I’m not sure why that should matter to the proprietor. Surely in a city this size, there are plenty of Pallridden people.

  “Where’d you get the mods?” the proprietor demands, speaking directly to Ren this time.

  “How is that any of your business?” Amiyah answers for her, though Ren looks to me like she could hold her own just fine.

  The proprietor’s eyes narrow. “You think I don’t know illegal mods when I see them? Where’d you get them? Itaki district?”

  “What do you care?” Casanova demands. “You in the market?”

  “Fine, don’t tell me.” The proprietor shrugs in a way that’s anything but casual. “You can try giving this lip to the keepers when they get here. No concern of mine.”

  “Oh fuck off, you didn’t call the keepers!” Noah protests. He sounds as surprised as I feel.

  “Fuck off yourself. The reward for turning in off-market mod dealers is more than you’re paying for this room.”

  I swing my legs over the edge of her bunk and drop to the floor, not sure what I plan to do but feeling compelled to do something.

  “The Talavar’s in town,” I say calmly. “Should be easy enough to find out if she’s on anything illegal. That’s one of the things they test for.”

  “Good,” says the proprietor smugly as four sets of horrified eyes turn toward me. “The keepers can take ‘er straight there.”

  I’m shaking my head before he is finished speaking. “Not necessary. I’m the Conductor’s assistant,” I lie. “I’ll see to it that she gets to the front of the blood draw line first thing tomorrow. If you’re right, the Conductor will make sure you’re compensated.”

  “Ho! You’re the Conductor’s assistant, are you? Sure thing, dear, and I’m the President of the Council.”

  I cross my arms defiantly. “Fine, don’t believe me. See what the Conductor says when I report you for obstructing blood testing.”

  This, at last, gives the proprietor a moment’s pause. His eyes sweep over me as if looking for some evidence of my claim to authority. For the first time it occurs to me that I should carry something with me in a strange, sprawling city to prove my association with Charlie. Could come in handy.

  As if reading my bluff, the man laughs, his momentary doubt vanishing. “Nah. Calling the keepers.”

  “Why don’t you take the girl’s deal and save everyone a lot of trouble?” says a new voice from behind him.

  Startled, the proprietor turns as all eyes settle on the room’s final lodger—the one I thought was sleeping. The woman leans against her bunk now, tall, muscular, and wearing a decidedly dangerous expression. She looks like she’s in her late 30s and is dressed simply, in linen pants and a thin tank top, but her demeanor is that of a cat ready to pounce. A belt or bandolier of some kind hangs from the bedpost and one of her hands rests casually on the hilt of something emerging from one of its many pouches. The conversation has evidently awakened her, if the impressions of sheets lingering on her cheeks is any indication, but there is no hint of sleep in her gaze. There is, however, a good measure of annoyance.

  Although her words wear the guise of a mild suggestion, there is no mistaking the threat in her posture. The proprietor doesn’t miss it either. He considers for a few seconds, then nods.

  “Fine.” He turns suddenly back to me, “But if you’re lying, don’t think I won’t remember your face. You won’t find this neighborhood quite so welcoming on your next visit.”

  With this somewhat impotent threat and a final, scathing glance at the Pallridden girl, the proprietor turns on his heel and we are alone once more.

  “Well. Thanks everyone. That was about to get inconvenient.” Ren grins and I can’t help but return it.

  “Probably should sleep with one eye open just in case.”

  “Neither of you had to intervene, but we appreciate it,” Noah says in a tone rich with sincerity and warmth.

  At the same time, Casanova asks, “How did you think of that thing about the blood draws so fast? That was brilliant.”

  I consider explaining, but settle for a shrug and a yawn. Telling this crowd I really am friends with a high-ranking Committee-member and overseer of blood studies might not be the best move.

  “Easy now, Callum, this isn’t your chance to make a move,” Amiyah admonishes with a wink. “And thank you,” she adds, turning to the stranger who is already retreating back into her bunk. “Sincerely.”

  “No problem,” the woman mumbles, and rolls over with her back to the rest of us once more. “Won’t get any sleep if there’s a keeper raid.”