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‘Two armed guards,’ Atrox Ferox said. ‘And Sterrington. I will momentarily place Athanais where he will not be disturbed.’ He opened the compartment door and deposited him on a cream sofa.
‘And how many guards in each carriage between us?’ Irene was trying to gauge her opposition, but however she did this, the words YOU LOSE seemed worryingly inevitable.
Atrox Ferox shrugged. ‘Half a dozen in each carriage, and the same in the carriages beyond them. You must have made quite an impression.’ His speech was significantly less formal now, coming and going, and Irene wondered how much of it had been a deliberate pose.
Zayanna sighed and leaned against Irene’s back, draping her arms round Irene’s neck. ‘Darling, I hate to say it, but this isn’t sounding good. Can you enchant their eyes?’
‘Probably not,’ Irene admitted: there were just too many. Her mind raced through other tactics instead. She had read Sun Tzu, after all, and she knew her enemy. Assuming Atrox Ferox wasn’t preparing a trap - to say nothing of Zayanna, whom she could only trust so far, if at all.
She needed to think outside the box somehow. Having Atrox Ferox and Zayanna escort her through as a ‘captive’ was a possibility, but she could think of far too many ways it could go wrong.
Something was prodding at the back of her mind. Outside the box. The Train was basically a set of boxes. So she needed to get outside the Train. But could she … ? She looked up at the ceiling of the compartment. There were two unobtrusive trapdoors in the ceiling, one at each end of the compartment.
All right.
‘Clarice?’ Zayanna prompted, and Irene realized they were waiting for her to speak.
‘I think I have an idea,’ she said. A really bad one. ‘I need to shorten my skirts, I need a lift and I need a gun. Atrox Ferox, may I borrow yours?’
He considered for a moment, then handed it over. ‘If any ask, I will say you overcame me and took it from my body,’ he warned.
‘That sounds very reasonable,’ Irene said. She took it from him and gauged its weight in her hand. ‘How many shots does it hold?’
‘Fifteen. You will find there is little recoil.’
‘What do you mean, a lift?’ Zayanna asked. ‘And where do we come into it?’ She brought out a knife from somewhere - Irene decided not to wonder how she’d hidden it in her bikini - and offered it to Irene.
Irene tucked the gun under one arm and began to roughly shorten her skirts to knee-level with the knife. ‘I mean that I’m heading for the roof of the Train.’
There was a deadly silence. Finally Zayanna said, ‘Darling, are you completely and utterly insane? I mean, it’s tremendously brave of you, but—’
‘The Train hasn’t tried to stop me so far,’ Irene said. The knife ripped through her sodden skirts, baring her stockings and shoes. ‘I’m counting on that to mean I can move along the roof. I’m grateful for what you two have done, but I don’t want to get you into further trouble.’
That was a lie, but it was more polite than trying to get rid of them. ‘Though if you could manage a bit of a diversion, I would be grateful.’
‘Such is within the bounds of propriety,’ Atrox Ferox pronounced. Zayanna pressed her knuckles against her mouth, her teeth showing white as she gnawed on them. ‘I’ll scream,’ she promised. ‘We’ll draw some of the guards out of the way. Oh, do be careful, Clarice.’
You’re following the Distressed Maiden archetype rather than the Dark Seductress mode right now, Irene mused drily. But all she said was, ‘Just be careful,’ as she tucked Atrox Ferox’s gun into her sash. ‘Both of you. Please.’
They nodded. Then Atrox Ferox went down on one knee under the nearer trapdoor, offering her a convenient step.
Irene balanced on his shoulder, looking up. The round trapdoor was large enough to fit her comfortably, with a heavy bolt on one side, and two thick hinges on the other. The mechanics were obvious enough. Adrenaline was fuelling her again and so, before she could change her mind, she quickly tugged on the bolt and pushed, hard, on the cold metal. It swung past her with a loud screech from the hinges, and with a howl the noise of the wind filled the compartment. It wasn’t exactly quiet - something to remember at the other end.
She looked up at the night sky, full of stars and darkness. ‘Now, please,’ she said.
Atrox Ferox rose to his feet underneath her, boosting her up smoothly. She wriggled out onto the top of the Train, fingers groping for a handhold.
The wind nearly ripped her off the roof before she could even get her balance: she flattened herself desperately against the metal, sliding across the roof of the Train as the trapdoor thudded back into place underneath her. Its momentum slammed her into the ornamental rail on one side of the roof, and she latched on to it with the strength of panic. The polished metal was freezing cold, and for a moment her hands began to slip. She forced herself to grip more tightly, her lips shaping silent windblown curses, the Language no use to her here. Finally, she managed to wedge her hip into the narrow gap between rail and Train roof to steady herself.
Endless pale dunes of sculpted sand whipped past under the cold stars, as she tried to make herself move again. Her very practical and very present fear of death warred with her need to rescue her friends. But time was running out. She pushed herself onwards.
The slipstream pressed her against the roof as if she was on an extreme fairground ride, but as long as she kept flat to the metal surface as she pulled herself along, it was manageable. The sound of the wind and the Train’s wheels filled her ears, shaking her down to her bones.
Then as she came to the end of the carriage, before the covered section that joined it to the next, she raised her head briefly to look down the length of the Train. It seemed to stretch on for dozens of carriages, a near-endless stream of mercury and darkness crossing the desert. Beyond that, right at the edge of her vision, she saw followers, and her stomach clenched. She couldn’t make them out clearly, but some were dark, some were bright; some might have been hounds or wolves, while others might have been riders or motorcyclists, or even cars. But they were spread across the horizon, all inexorably tracking the Train. And in the lead was a single figure on his own, running along the track. The Rider, come to take the Horse back and fulfil his own story.
She saw failure in that moment. Unless she remembered something.
Abandoning one precious handhold, she raked her fingers against a join in the roof’s metal panelling until she felt a raw edge snag her skin and draw blood. Then she reached into her bodice, finding the pendant that Kai’s uncle had given her, and dragged it over her head. The chain caught in her tangled, matted hair and she had to tug to get it free. What had he said?
