“Wait thirty seconds,” he signs. “The guards will rotate to the third tower, and in the gap, you can move to the other side of the tracks.”
I turn my attention back to the tracks. I wait the full thirty seconds, then take a deep breath and slip between the cars to the other side of the tracks. Sure enough, the space is empty, the guards gone for a breath. I move as quickly and quietly as I can, placing the spheres at careful intervals.
Most of the cars of this train seem to be carrying back hauls of crumbled stone and twisted steel, remnants of Newage’s destruction that the Federation must want to recycle and turn into better things. I glimpse cars filled with nothing but glass shards or black stone or mangled sections of metal.
Under the tower, Jeran signs again, “One minute.”
I speed up my work. One sphere, then another, then another. On the opposite end of the train yard, Adena should be nearly done cycling around the station building itself. By the time we are finished and leave this site, no one will be the wiser that this entire site is rigged for destruction. The thought brings me a sense of grim satisfaction. Months of us hiding in the forest, rescuing the occasional prisoner, nothing more, while helplessly watching Karensa lay down these tracks and rebuild Newage the way they want, has eroded our confidence.
But even if we’re captured, there are others out in the forest. This war is not over yet.
Talin’s heartbeat comes through our link again. Stronger.
Something has changed; there is a new darkness in her, something unspeakable. I feel the weight of it, and fear fills my every cavity. Because I know that feeling. That darkness. My eyes again go back up to the city’s walls, searching. She must be here. This is no longer a hallucination.
And something has gone terribly wrong.
Then, all of a sudden, I hear a commotion near the front gate leading into Newage, and I freeze, melting back into the shadows of the train.
A patrol of soldiers heads out through the gate, pausing to split into two lines. I watch closely, then glance at the tower, wondering whether Jeran has another sign to send to me. No movement from him. My eyes dart to where Adena should be by the station. She doesn’t move either.
Between the two lines walks the Premier, who looks like he’s here to carry out a night inspection of the grounds. But it is not his presence that opens a pit in my stomach, hollow and nauseating. It is not him who sends the world around me spinning. Instead, it is the sudden, overwhelming surge of her presence in my mind. The heart and emotion of a girl I have thought about every waking moment for the past six months. It is the figure I see walking alongside the young Premier as he speaks in a low voice to one of his soldiers. This figure moves in sync with the Premier, and her eyes stay forward, searching the darkness.
No. I am scarcely aware of my breath hovering in the night air. The thought squeezes my chest tight. No.
And that’s when I see her unfurl a set of steel wings on her back, just slightly.
Talin.
I know every line of her figure and the tilt of her chin, even behind the mask and helmet she wears. The evening light outlines the profile of a young woman whose face I’ve taken care to memorize.
It’s her.
But even as I wrestle with my disbelief, I see with horror the slight unfurling of her own wings as she faces the Premier. The way she bows her head to the Premier as he turns to her.
You know what those wings mean. You know that black armor.
In desperation, I reach out to Talin through our link. But all I feel from her is that tide of darkness, the awfulness of what has been done to her. Her anguish coats the bridge between us.
The horror seeping in is a familiar feeling. It is watching your sister transformed into a Ghost, right before your eyes. It is knowing that your own defiance as a Karensan soldier meant the deaths of your family.
When I rip my gaze away and toward the train station, I see Jeran signing at me. “What’s happening?”
I can hardly bear to sign back. “Talin is alive,” I tell him.
Even in the distant shadow, I can see Jeran’s face brighten at my words. “She’s here? Can we get to her? Is she one of the prisoners being loaded—”
But I shake my head before he can even finish. “No,” I respond.
“Why?”
I turn my eyes back to the girl I used to know. “Because,” I sign, “she is a Skyhunter.”
5
TALIN
Red. I’d sensed him.
I’d felt his presence while I soared over Newage. I’d felt the lilt of his emotions seeping through our link as I toured the grounds outside the city walls with the Premier.
I’d tried over and over again to call to him, but he must be too far away for me to speak to him. Still, I’d watched the grounds with my emotions pulled tight, my gaze sweeping for any sign of him even as I monitored the train tracks. Even as we returned to the National Hall that night, Red’s familiar pull lingered in the back of my mind, haunting me.
He is here. He is here.
If Constantine can tell that something has shaken my feelings tonight, he doesn’t say it. Instead, he walks beside me at a slower pace than earlier in the day. Even though he’d looked every inch the Premier at the arena, he finally falters as we head back into the city late in the night. I feel his weight lean slightly against me, then his voice coming through our link.
Talin.
Sir.
Hold out your arm to me.
I sense the slight fog of his emotions, the numbness of his mind as his aches plague him tonight. Even though everything in me wants to kill him, plunge one of my weapons into his chest and end his life, I instead hold out my arm and let him take it, feel his hand tremble against my armguard as he uses my strength to keep himself steady.
I hate the way he turns his weakness into a weapon against me, forcing me to help him in his moments of need, as if he isn’t the tyrant of the Federation. A person who has the power to destroy every life around him. But I swallow my anger and assist him. As I do, I repeat to myself the silent promise I always make.
Someday, his illness will kill him. If it doesn’t, I vow that I will.
* * *
For now, the Premier has turned our former Speaker’s chambers in the National Hall into his personal rooms. It’s a vast space surrounded by windows layered several panels thick, engineered to stop bullets from shattering them all the way through. There used to be Maran banners hanging on either side of the door, so I heard, but they’ve been replaced with maps of the entire Karensa territory.
Tonight, as I wait for Constantine to settle into bed, I stare at the maps. The Federation’s land runs red on the paper, the color bleeding across an entire continent from ocean to ocean. Once, a long time ago, it covered only the northeastern part of this land. Then it leaked into Tanapeg and Hover, Kente and Larc. Basea. My eyes travel from the coast of the eastern sea across the continent to the west, across former nation after bloodied former nation, sweeping north until I finally reach Mara, newly scarlet.
A lump sits heavy in my throat. For months, I’d witnessed teams dismantling parts of this city. A small but beautiful ruin in the center of Newage, the Waterfall, was removed piece by piece, its bones groaning as workers toppled it sideways. I’d watched, numb. When I was first accepted into the Striker recruits and paired with Corian, I’d gone to the Waterfall to give my own thanks. Mara doesn’t believe in gods, but we have always held up the Early Ones with a degree of supernatural awe. So I used to kneel there and wish for good fortune to guide me in the Strikers, to make it as a recruit, and to support my mother in the Outer City. I can still remember the cool breeze filtering between the structure’s gaps, the cold ground seeping through the fabric against my knees.