burning oil and churned-up dirt. The nearest carriage groaned as it settled to a stop, letting the train fall into silence, or as close to it as such a huge machine could.
The Night Train stretched back endlessly down the track, no longer the grand funerary train of Albion’s last age, created to carry the dead to their place of rest, but a twisted ruin of what it had once been: a symbol of terror instead of hope. Its carriage doors opened one by one, filling the air with the shriek of sliding metal, then the first cages were rolled forward and the throbbing sound of machinery echoed inside, sending many of the prisoners into a panic.
The station was in an uproar. No one wanted to be put on that train, and their shouts were deafening. People fought at their locks, tried to squeeze through the bars, and two cages crashed onto their sides as their occupants tried desperately to escape. The wardens ignored them and stood in silence along the platform, their daggers glinting in the lantern light. They did not care if people shouted or fought or begged or screamed. To them, Morvane was just another town and they had already won.
“You will not be traveling with them,” said Silas, turning Kate away from the shouting people and leading her toward the front of the train. “I want you where I can see you.”
A set of three metal steps folded down from a door close to the front of the train and Silas motioned for her to step aboard. Kate looked back across the station, wondering where Artemis was, among all of those people. Maybe if she did what Silas wanted, for now, he might make a mistake, or at least leave her alone long enough for her to free herself. Something told her Silas was not the kind of man who made mistakes, but that small hope was enough to make her climb those steps with a little less fear. She was going to get out of this, and she was going to help Artemis. She just didn’t have any idea how she was going to do it yet.
Kate stepped up into the monstrous carriage and was met by the dull flicker of tiny lanterns swinging in groups from metal beams overhead, but other than those beams the roof was completely open to the sky. Dark clouds moved sluggishly through the night and the jagged remains of the station’s roof crisscrossed above her. The Night Train was a bare skeleton of what it had once been. It had walls but no roof and no real floor but the girders needed to hold it together. One step to either side would have sent Kate falling through onto the tracks, and if the train was moving, she had no doubt someone could easily be dragged underneath.
“Keep moving,” ordered Silas.
Kate continued slowly along the girder toward the center of the carriage. To her right three rows of cages hung from chains hooked onto the beams and three more matched them on the left-hand side, swinging precariously over wide open gaps in the floor. All of them were empty.
Silas unlocked one of the cages on the right and held it still while she climbed inside. “This is the quietest part of the train,” he said, unclipping her wrist chain and locking the door behind her. “The wardens do not patrol this carriage, and I have sole possession of the prisoners carried here.” He pulled a red blanket from a cage on the other side and forced it through the bars into Kate’s hands. “Get some sleep. We will not reach Fume until morning and there will be plenty of work for you to do once we arrive. You will be no good to me without rest.”
Kate shivered in the icy cold. Snow began to fall again, and she waited stubbornly for Silas to walk back out onto the platform before wrapping the blanket around herself for warmth. The great train’s door slid shut and the finality of the sound reverberated through the walls. She rattled the cage door. The lock was bent a little from a previous occupant’s attempts at escape and it would not budge, so she stood in the corner of the cage with the blanket around her, clutching her mother’s necklace, not wanting to accept the truth.
She was trapped on the Night Train, helpless, just as her parents had been. Was this how they had felt the day the