‘Plenty of seats, mate. Sit where you like.’
He thought that might be a sign to the boy to move on, but instead, Jess was presented with a meaty hand to be shaken, and the other boy said, ‘Thomas Schreiber.’
‘Jess Brightwell.’ They shook, and the boy wedged his big frame into the seat beside Jess and let out a lingering sigh of relief.
‘Finally, room to breathe.’
Jess didn’t much agree with that, as Thomas had just taken up most of his. ‘Come a long way?’
‘Berlin. You know Berlin?’
‘Not personally,’ Jess said. ‘Nice place?’
‘Very nice. And you? From?’
‘London.’
‘In England? But that is a long way also!’
‘It is, yeah. Guess you’re off to Library training too?’
‘I am. I hope for a placement in engineering. My grandfather was a silver band for many years.’
‘Engineering … that falls under Artifex. Heard that was a hard one. Does having a silver band relative make you some kind of legacy, then?’ When he received a blank look from Thomas, Jess tried again. ‘Legacy means you didn’t have to sit for the entry tests. Kids of gold bands get to go straight into training. Wasn’t sure about silver.’
‘Would be nice, yes? No, no, nothing like that. I had to take the examination.’
‘Yeah? How’d you do?’
Thomas shrugged. ‘All right.’
‘I got seven hundred and fifty. Highest score in London.’ He realised, as he said it, that it sounded like boasting. Well, all right. He was proud of it.
Thomas raised his pale eyebrows and nodded. ‘Very good.’ There was something in the carefully polite way he said it that made Jess glower at him.
‘What was yours?’
Thomas looked reluctant to say it, but Jess’s stare finally dragged it out of him. ‘Nine hundred twenty-five.’
‘What?’
‘Students from Berlin have always done well on the examination.’ Thomas made it sound both proud and apologetic at the same time.
‘Done well? Mate, I’m sure none of the Scholars in London could have scored that. Must be the highest score of the year!’
‘No,’ Thomas said. ‘That would be hers.’ He looked around the train and nodded towards a young woman sitting near the back. Jess belatedly recognised her. She’d boarded earlier, with a flurry of relatives who’d clustered around her and departed only when the conductor had given them a warning.
She was as small as Thomas was large, and from the little Jess could see of her, she seemed darker skinned, with a closely pinned black cloth covering her hair. Hard to see anything, really, because she was engrossed in a book.
‘That one,’ Thomas said. ‘She was the first in the history of the examination to have a perfect score, they say. Not the first girl. The first anyone.’ He sounded impressed, and respectful. As Jess stared back, the girl lowered her book and returned their gazes with forthright brown-eyed intensity. Thomas, embarrassed at being caught out, quickly turned face forward again.
Jess, on the other hand, kept looking. She was pretty, not beautiful, but there was something about her that he found interesting. She cocked one eyebrow higher than the other, just like his brother’s favourite trick, and he tried to mirror it back. Still couldn’t.
So he settled for standing up and climbing past the mountain range of Thomas’s knees.
‘Where are you going?’ Thomas whispered.
‘To say hello,’ Jess said. ‘Smartest girl in the world? Worth knowing.’
‘I wouldn’t …’
Jess was already walking back towards the girl, who was still watching him with that challenging dark stare, when a man moved over to take a seat next to her. He was a rounded fellow, older, expensively dressed in traditional Arab robes.
Jess stopped and bowed politely to the girl. She nodded back. ‘Wanted to introduce myself,’ he said. ‘Jess Brightwell. That’s my mate Thomas Schreiber, the big shy one back there.’
‘Khalila Seif,’ she said. ‘May I present my uncle Nasir? He is accompanying me to the Alexandrian border.’
The uncle gave Jess a warm smile, rose, and gave him a bow in return. It was all very civil, but he wasn’t leaving the girl’s side, that much was obvious.
Jess turned back to Khalila. ‘Highest score on the test,’ he said. ‘You’d be guaranteed a place, I suppose.’
‘Nothing in life is guaranteed. I may not be able to handle the work, after all. Some people prove fragile.’
‘Fragile,’ Jess repeated. ‘Yeah, you don’t strike me that way.’
‘You are also a student, sir?’ her uncle asked.
‘Nowhere near as bright as your niece, sir, but yes.’
‘And from where?’
‘England, sir.’
‘Ah. Are you not at war …?’
‘Not the part of the country I’m from,’ Jess said. The man was too well mannered to say it, but he clearly thought England was a hotbed of trouble. ‘Well, I’ll let you read, then, Miss Seif. Pleasant trip.’
‘Thank you for your courtesy, Mr Brightwell,’ she said. ‘I wish you a smooth journey as well.’ Very formal, but the smile less so. Not warm, exactly. But not afraid.
And definitely not fragile.
Jess climbed back over Thomas to his seat and said, ‘Well, that’s one placement spoken for; she’ll end up a Curator one day, if not the damned Archivist. My future’s looking dimmer all the time.’ He didn’t mean it. He liked challenges, and this … this was turning out to be one of the best challenges he’d faced in his life. It was boring, always being smarter. Already, he felt he’d have to work for it here.
You’re never coming back. Brendan’s words suddenly returned to him. They were prophetic, because already his family seemed like a fading dream. He felt good here.
He felt right.
As the conductors outside the train windows cried last boarding, a raw-boned young woman ran hell-bent for their car. Not a graceful sort of movement, but those long legs ate up the platform’s length, and she leapt for the still-open door in the last second before the conductor slammed it shut and the train’s whistle blew. She leant against the panelling, flushed and sweating, and overbalanced and fell onto Jess and Thomas’s laps as the train lurched into motion.
No lightweight, this girl. And sharp elbows. Jess winced and rubbed his chest as she fought her way back to her feet and glared at him and Thomas as though they were guilty of an assault on her person.
‘Welcome,’ Thomas said. ‘Thomas Schreiber. Berlin.’ He offered her a hand. She clawed disordered, curling brown hair back from her face, and her glare turned to an outright frown, but she shook. Grudgingly. ‘And you are … ?’
‘Glain Wathen. Merthyr Tydfil.’ She shut up fast as her eyes fell on Jess.
‘Jess Brightwell. London.’
She gave him a sour look, then pushed off and found a seat near the back.
‘She doesn’t like you,’ Thomas said. ‘Does she know you?’
‘No need,’ Jess replied. He could feel Glain’s stare boring into the back of his head. ‘By the sound of her, she’s Welsh. She’s probably making a plan to stick a knife in my kidney before we get to the border.’ When Thomas just continued to look confused, he said, ‘I’m English. Blood feuds. Makes people irrational.’