behind the nearest cage and scrabbled beneath the wheels, waiting for them to pass by.
“Hey! You!”
He had been too slow.
For a moment, Edgar just stared at the two men as they ran his way. Then he rolled out across the dirt, sprang to his feet and was off at a sprint, barreling along like a wily mouse fleeing from two fast cats. He raced past five burning torches and made a sharp turn before colliding with a horse that reared up in fright.
“Argh!” He wriggled away from the horse’s falling hooves, scrambled under a second cage, and changed direction. There was no time to climb on top of a cage now, so instead he did what no warden would expect him to do. He headed straight for the Night Train itself.
Groups of lanterns fanned out from the station as patrols began sweeping the rows one by one. The search was highly organized, making it predictable enough for Edgar to slip between two groups and sneak right into the station without being seen. Once inside, he crept along what was left of the main wall and ran across the northern end of the platform, jumping down onto the tracks between two of the train’s enormous carriages. He ducked, pressed his back against the side of the platform, and stopped there to catch his breath and figure out his next move. Getting that far was amazing enough, but the train would be leaving soon and he still had to find a way on board.
Once all the front carriages were filled, the train’s brakes steamed suddenly and the wheels began to move. Edgar heaved himself up on to the coupler that held the two carriages together and, as the train rolled forward to bring the rear carriages up to the platform, he struggled to keep his feet up off the tracks, dragging himself along on his belly and clinging to the coupler for safety. Every inch the train moved carried him an inch farther down the platform, past wardens and prisoners alike. He had to move. Fast.
Edgar had been carried right through the station by the time the train stopped again. His hands stung as he peeled them off the icy metal and began to climb hand to hand up a vertical bar fixed to the end of one of the carriages. Once up, the snow was falling so heavily it blinded him to everything farther away than two carriages in either direction. There was no way to tell where Kate would be, but if he stayed out in the open for too long he would be too cold to do anything other than curl up and hope the weather finished him off before the wardens did.
There was no sign of Silas’s crow inside the station and, as the prisoners continued to be loaded, Edgar spotted some of the horse-drawn carriage drivers walking their horses down the platform ready to be taken aboard.
Horses?
Where there were animals, there was heat. If the train had a horse box . . .
Edgar set off, skulking along the edges of the carriage roofs, moving parallel to the horses as they made their way to the middle of the train. He moved quickly, concentrating on where he was putting his feet and daring to make the jump between carriages whenever one came to an end. His stomach turned with every leap. He felt exposed, the ground was too far away and he knew he would become nervous and fall if he looked down. Somewhere through the snow he heard Silas’s voice, but the order he was shouting was nothing to do with him and so Edgar kept going, feeling like a fly on a dog’s back, until the smell of hay and animals reached his nose, drawing him on with its promise of warmth.
He knelt on top of the only carriage he had found with a proper roof and looked down through a wooden grille at a collection of tired horses, each one penned in, giving off a welcome heat that drifted up through the bars and into his face. With two strong tugs, the old grille broke off in his hands and he dropped down into an empty stall. The neighboring horses stamped their hooves, sensing the presence of an intruder, but Edgar was too exhausted to care. He piled the hay up around him, letting his muscles relax for the first time in hours, and squeezed his freezing hands together, trying to warm up his blood.
He