36. Explosives Engineering
A red-clad guard grabbed Ciarán by the arm to pull him towards the prison carriage, but I pulled him back. Magick itched in my fingertips. The mountains pressed at that magnetic connection between me and the land, but I would fight to keep Ciarán by my side.
“You’ll be fine,” Tamora drawled. “I’ve seen you fight, Saergrim. I’m sure you can take a few rotsbane on your own.”
“I’m not letting you keep my friends in a prison cell,” I seethed.
“It’s a private cabin on the Grand Baron’s personal supply steamcart. It’s luxury,” Tamora said.
Orla, Iseult, Tiernan, and Fana continued to blink at us through the sunlight, and while I was relieved they were alive, nothing about their current status screamed “luxury”.
“I need their help against the rotsbane.”
“You have Titus.” Tamora shrugged.
“He’s a Nightmare! They’ll eat him!”
Tamora rolled her eyes and pivoted on a stiletto heel to look over my friends. “Fine. That one. Out.”
She pointed at Tiernan. One of the guards stepped into the carriage to grab Tiernan by his bicep and pulled him to his feet.
Tamora clapped her hands at Ciarán. “Grimguard. In.”
I reached for Ciarán’s hand, but he stepped forward, still leaning against Una, before I could grab it.
“The sooner we’re on the steamcart, the more time we have to travel by daylight,” Ciarán said in my head. “Don’t argue. You’ll make it through.”
“The last time you were taken from me, Ergoth—”
“Do not think about Ergoth.”
The apprehension that buzzed along our tether told me he wasn’t as assured as he was pretending to be, but I let him climb into the carriage as Tiernan climbed out.
Tiernan wavered on his feet when he landed on the platform. His broken ankle hadn’t healed well.
“And to think we all wasted such thoughtful farewells on you, assuming we’d never see you again,” he grunted. “Hello, Wren.”
“He’s injured!” I gestured at his leg.
“Oh?” Tamora simpered and jerked a thumb at my friends still in the carriage. “Your Grimguard is in worse shape than this one is, that one is a child, and that one is missing a leg entirely, so perhaps you should invest in friends that are in better fighting condition.”
“But Orla is fine!” I met Orla’s wide eyes and stark face, but Tamora signaled the guards, and the door slid shut.
Una barked from inside, and Ciarán reassured me in my mind.
“You’ll be okay. I’m right here.”
“Never far,” I replied, echoing something he’d said to tease me once.
Tamora led the way to the next carriage over with her guards in tow.
Five more guards waited inside a much more lavish carriage than the one she was keeping my friends in.
Lamps full of swirling Skal lit the space, reflecting off bronze accents and highlighting the velvet plush of a chaise lounge and surrounding ottomans.
Tamora fell back on the lounge while her guards took up positions at the doors.
“You’ll want to stay near the engine.” She gestured towards the gilded door that led to the next carriage. “Keep the steamcart safe, and your friends will be safe too.”
“You’re coming to Ephitz Harbor with us?” I asked.
“Of course.” She grinned. “I trust you to protect us, Saergrim. Get on with it. I’ll be here if you need me, but I think you’ll find it in your best interest if you don’t.”
Tiernan and I followed Stanley to the door, and the hissing of steam accompanied the jolting of the carriage.
The next carriage over was darker than Tamora’s, and roped crates stacked high occluded the sunlight that fought to come through either side of windows.
The door slammed shut behind us.
“Hi, Tiernan,” I sighed.
“Wren.” He gave me a clipped nod, then limped after Stanley towards the next door into the next carriage. “Didn’t think I was going to see you again.”
“Not the first time you’ve thought that.”
“Fair. I suppose next time we depart from each other, I just need to get myself captured. You show up every time to spring me free.”
“Have you considered not getting captured if you don’t want to see me anymore?”
“What happened to Willow’s Grave?” he asked. “If you’re here—”
“The citadel is safe. We weren’t going to follow you but—” I eyed Stanley warily, unwilling to mention Lyria’s doorway with him in earshot. “I can tell you more later.”
“I’m sorry,” Tiernan hissed. “We should’ve been there by now. If we had been more careful—”
“Then you’d be dead,” I interrupted. “It’s better this way. Promise.”
We fell silent as Titus tilted his head to the side, as if to hear us better, but then he opened the carriage door to pass between the carts, releasing a gush of wind that would’ve been impossible to hear us over anyway.
I caught a glimpse of foggy marshland full of stunted, gnarled trees as I stepped into the open air between the carriages. The sun gleamed through the mist, already too low to the horizon for my liking.
Night could only be a few hours away.
We followed Stanley through five carriages full of crates of food, tools, armor, and barrels of Skal. The piles of supplies shifted against restraints of rope and netting, towering over the narrow aisles between them.
I was just wondering if there would be anywhere to sit and plan, or even space to fight a rotsbane, when we stepped into a sparse lounge. A few tables rattled against the bolts that held them in place, and wooden chairs grated against the floor as they moved with the train's shaking.
Stanley paused in the middle of the carriage, staring ahead at the next door, unmoving.
“Stanley?” I pressed.
“Who’s Stanley?” Tiernan asked.
“He is. It’s his real name in Keldori.”
“You know him?”
“Not really.”
Stanley remained taciturn, so I grabbed a chair as it slid past and dragged it to a table by a window. Tiernan did the same, and in the dim light afforded by the overhead skal-lamps, I checked him for signs of fresh injury.
“Are any of you hurt?” I asked.
“We’re all fine. More annoyed at having been caught than anything. Though, my leg still isn’t working like it used to. Must’ve not healed right.”
“I’m sorry.” I curled my fingers into a fist on the table. “That’s my fault.”
“I told you to try healing it. I wouldn’t have made it to Willow’s Grave on that ankle,” he assured me. “Tamora’s men recognized us when we tried to change carts at a station. What about you?”
“She picked us up in the strath—”
“The strath?” Tiernan interjected, his golden eyes narrowing under a furrowed brow. “You don’t mean Mycastrath?”
I grimaced in reply, watching the landscape slip by outside rather than look at Tiernan.
He surprised me by allowing a low laugh to slip through his lips. I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard him laugh before.
“I thought Galahad had gone senile when he picked you up at the start of summer,” Tiernan said evenly. “But he knew what you were capable of better than any of us, including you, I think. You really survived the strath?”
“We did.”
“But what’s inside?” he pressed. “No one has ever survived before, but now that you have, other Magicians might stand a chance—”
“It doesn’t matter what’s inside, because it’s not there anymore.”
“Right. Sorry.” He bowed his head. “My Lady, I’m—”
“Call me ‘my Lady’ one more time, and I’ll throw you at the first rotsbane we see.” I patted the table with both hands and turned away from the window. “Which is so far the closest thing we have to a plan in terms of keeping the steamcart safe once it gets dark out.”
“They’ll attack the engine first.” Stanley’s low voice rumbled overhead, and I glared up at him.
“Yes. Thank you, Stanley. Tamora already mentioned that. The trick is how to keep them from doing so,” I snarled. “Skal-weapons don’t hurt them. We need something corporeal. I don’t suppose you know how to make metal weapons?”
Tiernan shook his head at me. “That’s very advanced magick.”
I looked to Stanley and raised an eyebrow.
“You know Nightmares aren’t capable of that level of magick,” he growled.
“My mom is,” I said simply, remembering her procured pen and notebook in the library.
“And is she here?” Stanley sneered.
“No, she’s in Keel Watch, keeping Gams’s shop safe from annoying bankers.”
“Then what about you? Can’t you make a corporeal weapon? You’re a Saergrim apparently.”
“Does that annoy you, Stanley?” I smirked. “You thought you were the most special human in all of Keldori because you knew about Skalterra while no one else did, only to discover I exist?”
“So, no. You can’t make metal either,” he said.
I sighed and clenched my fists.
I could. I could create anything I wanted. I was sure of it. But I could feel how close the mountains were to bursting.
I would heal the rest of Ciarán’s injuries in Ephitz Harbor, but other than that, there would be no more magick for me. Not until Gams was safe in the ice.
“We can check the supplies,” I said. “There’s got to be something—Really, Stanley?”
He’d turned stoic again, staring at the window beside me but not seeming to see beyond its glass.
I looked to Tiernan for help, but he shrugged.
“Maybe he’s speaking with Tamora? In his mind?” he suggested.
“Is that what I look like when I talk to Ciarán?”
“You talk to Ciarán in your mind?”
My cheeks flushed with heat. “I figured you knew.”
“Like you can talk to him right now?”
“Like right now,” I confirmed. “Ciarán, Tiernan says hi.”
“He did not,” Ciarán droned in my head.
“Ciarán says hi back,” I told Tiernan.
“I did not!”
I leaned back to look up at Titus’s passive face. He reminded me more of a normal Nightmare like this, staring unseeing until receiving orders.
“He hasn’t been able to buy any new chickens,” I realized.
“He’s a farmer?”
“A banker,” I said. “But my grandmother used porcelain chickens imbued with Skal to make semi-Lucid Nightmares. She’d sell the extras, and Stanley was a frequent customer.
They’re probably what made him Lucid here, but Gams’s shop has been closed for a few weeks now.
Stanley’s chickens are probably losing their magick, and he can’t get new ones. ”
“What did you say?” Stanley shook his head as he came to again.