the municipal complex in Kegu and ask to speak to whoever’s in charge.
When I think through it like that, it seems so incredibly foolish. But what is the alternative? It is not as if I can trust a letter to get there, and a telegram can be intercepted too. And it is not as if I know any rebels.
Well. I might know one. But I haven’t spoken to him in a year, and I have no idea where he is, no way to contact him.
“May I sit here?”
I look up to see a girl, about my age, with pink, cold-kissed cheeks and bright eyes. Her black hair is parted in the middle and braided, and her shirt and slacks tell me she probably works at Gochan Three. “Certainly,” I say, moving my satchel off the bench to make room for her.
“My name is Anji,” she says, settling onto the bench with her large cloth bag at her feet.
“Wen,” I say. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Where are you going?” she asks. “I’m headed to Vuda for the holiday. My family lives in Lavie. Easy enough to walk.”
“I’m going to Kegu,” I say. “My family is there.”
Her eyes widen. “They should be coming to you, not the other way around. It’s so dangerous there!”
“My mother is ill. She cannot travel.” Lying is becoming second nature, it seems, because my voice does not even shake.
“But you are all alone? How can your family allow you to do such a thing?” Anji looks horrified, and it makes my heart thump.
“I suppose the news out of Kegu has been rather alarming.”
She lets out a laugh. “I hope your father or brothers are meeting you at the station. Otherwise, you could be plucked right off the street. I heard there are roaming bands of rebels just looking for young girls to kidnap.”
I suspect some of those stories are not quite true. I grew up on tales of the savage Noor, and then I met some of those men, who turned out to be just that—men. But I am not about to have that argument with Anji. “Oh, of course. My brothers will be waiting for me.”
Anji relaxes and leaves me to my thoughts for a long while. The train chugs upward, along a high pass that will carry us west. Above us loom the northern peaks of the Western Hills, and to our south is the canyon that winds through them, a split in the land through which men and machines can walk to get from the Ring directly to the border villages of the Yilat Province. The train tracks stick to the northern foothills, and to my right, down the rocky slope, stretches the grasslands.
I have never been this far north and west before. My nose skims the window glass as I squint in the early dawn. Most women in the car with me are napping fitfully, their heads resting on their shawls and cloth bags, but I am wide awake as the sun rises slowly behind us, lighting the way. My throat aches as the golden light glints off a bend in the track. My father will be waking now, and will probably assume I am with Bo, since I start most mornings in his underground kingdom. And Bo will be awake too, wondering when my footsteps will echo through the tunnel.
I push them out of my thoughts as my eyes begin to burn. I think of what I have to say to the rebels. They need to prepare for those war machines to stride through the canyon, before they spill into Yilat and destroy everything in their path. Lost in those fears and my own memories, I drift through the next few hours.
The train is just pulling out of Ganluo, merely a depot in a small hillside village, when Anji pokes me in the shoulder. “Vuda is the next stop, but it’s almost an hour away still. Are you hungry? Will you come to the dining car with me?”
My stomach growls in response. “Let’s go.”
We sway down the aisle, rocked by the train as it rounds a curve and heads higher into the hills. There’s a sudden jolt, and I nearly topple into an elderly woman. Her knitting needles stab into my side. I apologize and keep walking, rubbing the sore spot over my ribs. When we get to the space between the cars, the conductor frowns. “The men are having their breakfast,” he says.
“Well, we’re hungry too,” says Anji, putting her hands