the graveyard city, performing complex rituals, maintaining the tombs and graves of the many families interred beneath its earth, and ensuring that their remains were treated with respect long after their funeral day had passed. But that was before the wardens had claimed the Night Train for themselves, before the bonemen had been driven into hiding and one of the old High Councils had walled up the country’s burial ground, transforming it into the great fortress city of Fume.
Fume was now a place for the wealthy, not the dead, and since the war with the Continent had begun, it had been the only town spared the threat of the wardens’ harvests. Living in the shadow of the High Council came at a high price, but for those willing to pay it, Fume was the only place in Albion to feel truly safe. The tall memorial towers looked down over stone streets, built to house the High Council’s most trusted followers and their families, while the extensive underground maze of caverns and tombs were left to lawless groups of smugglers and scavengers who managed to scrape out a living down in the dark. The needs of the rich were served by hundreds of servants and slaves, and none of them ever gave a thought to the thousands of dead still buried beneath their feet.
In its prime, Morvane’s station had been a simple building built from black stone. The main structure straddled the tracks like a long tunnel and a large arched entryway jutted out into the garden, with a wooden door that was always open, ready to welcome the dead. That was how Kate had seen it in drawings copied from that time, but now it looked very different.
Without the garden to soften its dark façade, the station was a bleak, miserable place. It looked angry and broken. Rain and wind had worn away most of the entryway, leaving only the right-hand wall and a few crumbling pieces of the rest. The wooden door lay rotting on the ground; metal beams that had once held a curved slate roof were gradually being devoured by rust; and, alongside what was left of the main building, a decrepit clock tower stood like a sentry overlooking the tracks. Normally that tower would have been in darkness, but on that night its roof was alive with a crown of dancing fire. The wardens were signaling the Night Train, ordering it to stop.
Silas’s carriage headed straight for the station, and as it rolled in through the entryway every warden stood to attention, acknowledging his arrival. Then a deep sound rumbled like the bowels of the earth, and somewhere to the north—still too far away to see—the oncoming train’s great wheels began to slow down.
Inside the station, the first cages were already being moved across the platform in preparation for the train’s arrival. But all work stopped and every prisoner fell silent when the ground began to tremble and a cold blue light seeped out of the darkness, tracing along the edge of the track’s boundary wall and focusing into a single blinding beam that cut through the night like a knife. The deep noise sounded again. Closer this time and unmistakable. Silas’s driver stopped the carriage right on the edge of the platform, where he climbed down, unhitched the horses, and led them quickly away.
Kate could feel the train approaching, but she still could not see anything but the light. The ground shook hard. Silas swung open the carriage door and the horn wailed again, deafeningly close. He pulled her out onto the slippery platform. Light flooded the walls, the rumble of wheels echoed through Kate’s bones, and the Night Train thundered into the station, groaning and grunting like a vast, malodorous beast.
It was a moving stink of dripping oil, hot grinding metal, and burning fumes; a patchwork of heavy repairs, newly forged metal, and old hammered panels all riveted together into one scarred machine. Its massive wheels growled against the pressure of the brakes and its metal carriages rolled behind, each one windowless and terrifying, accompanied by the creaking sound of hanging chains.
The train was a monster. Its engine car was taller than a house, with a twisted steam chimney on top and a pointed grille mounted on the front, designed to push anything it encountered out of the way. Kate’s head swam as a wave of putrid steam gushed from the wheels and tumbled onto the platform, carrying with it the hot smell of