eyes. But how could so much strangeness pop up here in the years since I’ve been gone? What would my mother think if she saw this?
I’m glad she can’t. I’m almost even glad my father isn’t around to witness what has happened to his nation.
This is a different land. This is Karensa.
Adena’s hand on my arm makes me startle. I look up to see her face pointed grimly out at the scene. “Best we get back inside,” she signs at me. “I think they’re checking the carriages.”
I rip my eyes away from the scene and scoot into the shadows with Adena as soldiers hurry by, carelessly glancing inside to make sure their cargo is there before patting the side of the train and moving on.
A short time later, the train’s whistle cuts through the air and I feel the carriage lurch forward again. We leave Basea behind. Soon, we’re traveling through wide stretches of alternating farmland and wilderness. Jeran and Adena don’t speak at all. Our Striker training has embedded in us the need to stay quiet in hostile surroundings, so here we use the occasional sign, nothing more. I find myself oddly comforted by our shared silence. When my stomach squeezes in hunger, I take out hunks of cooked yam and flatbread from my canvas bag and share it with the others as they pass me cold strips of chicken.
Through my link, I can tell that Red is still unconscious. They’ll probably keep him this way until we arrive at the capital, and I’m glad he doesn’t have to be awake for this journey, but I find myself missing his voice all the same.
Rain slants down across our carriage’s opening for the second night. The next morning, right as the first rays of light peek out over the horizon, we finally feel the train slow around a bend. I stir out of an uneasy sleep, uncurl my body, and make my way over to the entrance. Jeran’s already there, crouched, his entire body tense. He nods out at the scene without looking my way.
I glance out to see Cardinia, the capital of the Federation, sprawling before us.
The smaller city we’d seen now seems like nothing more than a construction project next to this place. Bridges of black steel radiate from the city’s edges in regular intervals, arching over a deep trench of a river that acts as a protective moat. The buildings stretch into the sky with brutal elegance, eight or ten stories high, their sides draped with banners trimmed in scarlet. Their interiors are flooded with so much light that I wonder how they prevent their buildings from burning down. Other trains run in and out of the city via the bridges, huffing their steam behind them in long trails.
I duck farther back into the carriage’s shadows as we now head along one of these bridges into the capital. My eyes tilt up at the structures towering over us. As we cross the river and enter the city, the roar of life fills my ears. There are people everywhere, spilling out from storefronts, packed into marketplaces, squeezed onto small trains that cut through the Karensan cities we’d passed before. They look like they come from every nation that the Federation has swallowed, although their clothing has changed to align with Karensan style—long, straight coats and trousers on the men, short coats on the women with loose pants that are so wide they look like dresses swaying with their steps.
Horses pull wagons through the crowded streets. The roads are paved with the same smooth black rock we have in our streets, a creation from the Early Ones. There are sights of beauty—enormous fountains surrounding elaborately carved statues, wide expanses of lush gardens, long roads lined with shops selling every variety of goods.
I focus on these shops the most. Fish, meat, and vegetables. Shoes. Soaps. A store with cans and jars piled high, selling preserved foods. Then there are stores displaying yards of fabric of all kinds, from silks to cottons and wools, as well as ammunition and weapons, knives and blades and guns, cakes and breads, cigars, hats, and medicines. The sheer variety makes my head spin. Along the banks of two rivers cutting through the city are dozens of factories, each seemingly powered by the churning of enormous water wheels. We have a few factories in Newage, right outside the Grid, all of them dedicated to creating uniforms and weapons for our soldiers, but here they seem to