wardens had taken them away? How long had they survived? Kate knew that they had made it to Fume, but Artemis had never told her what had happened to them after that. She buried herself deeper in the blanket. She was about to take the same journey her parents had taken ten years before, and there was nothing she could do about it.
There was no way out, nowhere to go. All she could do was wait.
Crouching behind a wall just outside the graveled garden, Edgar would have done almost anything for a blanket. His toes were numb, his fingers ached with cold, and his skin prickled in the icy air.
Getting across town had been difficult enough. With time against him, he had ridden a stolen bicycle the entire way, pumping the pedals as fast as he could, taking shortcuts no warden would ever know about, dodging patrols and trying to stay out of sight while the Night Train drew closer to the town every second. He had made it. The train was still there. All he had to do was sneak on board. That part had sounded easy when he had first thought of it. Now, seeing so many wardens in one place, it was starting to look impossible.
Edgar was peering over the wall, watching for a break in the warden patrols, when a flutter of wings settled on the wall beside him, and he turned to look straight down the beak of Silas’s crow. The bird strode proudly in front of him, not caring that it had been seen.
“Shoo!” said Edgar, slapping it away. “Get lost!”
The bird jumped deftly out of reach, lowered its head, and let out a loud, sharp call. “Krrarrk!”
“Stop that!” Edgar tried to grab hold of it, but it moved too fast, marching stubbornly up and down the wall. “Fine.” Edgar grabbed a chunk of stone and threw it at the crow’s feet. The bird clicked its beak and flapped its wings, glaring at him.
“Didn’t like that, eh? Next time it’ll be your head,” said Edgar. “Go on!”
The crow tilted its head to one side, as if listening to something far away. Then it snapped its beak viciously toward Edgar’s nose and took flight, circling up to the nearest rooftop to keep watch from a place Edgar’s stones could not reach.
“Great,” whispered Edgar. If the crow knew where he was, it wouldn’t be long before Silas sent the wardens out looking for him. It was time to do something.
“It isn’t that hard,” he told himself, looking out at the cages and shuffling his feet to keep warm. “Just stick to the plan.”
For his idea to work, Edgar had to choose his moment carefully. With most of the wardens loading cages onto the train, there were fewer of them left to guard the ones farthest away from it. All he had to do was climb one of the cages, hide on top of its roof, and let himself be taken aboard.
He stood up as straight as he dared, watching the commotion that had started inside the station spreading quickly to the prisoners still waiting outside. Edgar knew that sound well. The sound of fear. He knew what was in store for the prisoners. The Night Train was the stuff of nightmares to most people, but to him it was far more than that. He had been ten years old the day the wardens had come to claim the people of his own home town. He remembered being pushed into one of those cages, holding his brother’s hand and promising him that everything was going to be all right, even though he knew it wasn’t. He could never have imagined that, seven years later, he would be waiting for it again, trying to find his way on board.
“This is it,” he whispered, spotting a break in the patrols. He clenched his hands into fists, not at all convinced that he was going to come out of the next few minutes alive, and then ran into the moonlight, darting between the cages, searching for an empty one he could climb.
Some of the prisoners shouted at him as he sped past, but their voices were lost among the rest. Edgar ignored them. He couldn’t afford to slow down and there was nothing he could do for them anyway without a warden’s key. Then he saw them: a pair of wardens patrolling away from the rest, close enough for him to see the whites of their eyes. He ducked quickly