Chapter 36

Everyone settled once we crossed the viaduct. The men laid Regulus on a bench. His arms had gone out of socket from being suspended from the tower for so long, and the Mirth remnant was too weak to stand or sit upright by himself.

"We'll take you to the haelens right away, Regulus," I told him as he grimaced in pain. "I'm going to go tell Aramis to bring Camilla home so I can take you myself."

"Don't you dare leave her with him. Didn't you—fuck." He sucked a breath as someone hit his arm. "Didn't you listen to my warning? I told you not to trust the blonde bastards."

"What did you mean by that?" I asked. "Why?"

He sighed deeply, resting his eyes to retrieve the memory. "When I went out for a smoke that day, I heard the watchman climbing the ropes, so I hid on top of the tender and waited." He shifted in his seat. "I listened and watched, and either the Marcheses forgot to lock the car, or they let the watchman inside, because he walked straight into that bloody car."

"They're not that stupid to forget," I said. My cousin had vouched for Aramis herself, reminding me he was more intelligent than I first assumed.

He nodded. "Either way, I went to help them. Found them both knocked out—not shot—on opposite ends of the room. The guard was messing with something on the floor."

"That's where Milla was hiding. You think it was a set up?" I asked him.

"Well, it was real convenient he knew exactly where to look and the brothers came out without a scratch. But I didn't ask questions. I shot the man and went to find you. It wasn't hard to assume what they wanted."

"Why would the Marcheses help me rescue their sister if they planned on merely giving her back to the Watch? It doesn't make sense." Nothing about Aramis added up. He cared for Milla, that much was obvious from the brief time I'd spent with him, and yet his actions had contradicted that affection time and time again.

A loud bang from the rear ceased all conversation in the car.

That sound... a sharp clash of metal on metal. There was nothing in the world I could have compared it to, and when a sound was misplaced like this one, it meant nothing good. Nor did the direction it came from.

"Camilla . . ."

I lunged down the aisle to reach the door, to find my worst assumption on the other side.

"Nico!"

Milla stood in the doorway of the last car, shrinking as we were separated, as the train she was no longer connected to traveled further down the tracks. I hadn't noticed how fast we were going, being caught up in Regulus's story, but when we passed the station, I knew something was very wrong.

"What's happening?" Gideon asked behind me, a tremor in his voice.

I only cursed and darted back through the car to the opposite end, climbing over the tender to get to the engine where Marcus fiddled with the controls. His nimble frame slipped along the narrow passage along the boiler to check the various gauges attached to the metal pipes.

"Marcus, what the hells?" I shouted.

He jumped, eyes wide a moment before he continued with his work. "They busted the tank! The brakes are shot!"

"What do you mean the brakes—"

"There's no water!" he shrieked.

I'd never seen him like this, so terrified. And if an expert on steam trains was afraid, I'd be wise to be as well.

"Explain quickly," I ordered.

He wiped his sweaty face and slipped down the engine to face me. The fire in the boiler was glowing a bright orange against the darkness as we traveled toward the Wilds, through uninhabited lands.

"The boiler heats the water to make steam. That's what powers the train, the brakes, all of it. But somehow, we have no water left, so I can't control anything. Hells, I know we checked it before. I don't understand how this happened!"

My brain tried to come up with a solution, but I knew nothing of these metal beasts. Steam trains were like a living organism, too many parts working together in a science so impossible it could have been magic.

"I have a cousin who can control the heat," I said. "What if he cooled things off?"

Marcus shook his head, tears dripping from the corners of his eye. "The pressure is too high already. The copper stripping has gone soft..." he muttered more incoherent ramblings. "The damage was done before I realized what happened. I'm afraid we're about to blow, Mr. Attano, and there's nothing to do about it."

"Get in the passenger car, Marcus," I barked. If there was nothing he could do, no sense standing right next to the volatile engine.

As soon as we hopped over the tender, I asked him to help with the coupling, separating it as Aramis had done.

"Impossible . . ." he said.

My jaw locked, grinding my teeth together. "What now?"

"It's jammed! The cut lever is—"

I pushed him back and tried to pull the same switch, but it was no use. Even my false hand didn't have the strength to push it open.

"This was fucking planned," I growled, anger replacing any useless drop of fear in my heart. Marcus would never let the water get that low. He'd run this train for days and weeks on end. He knew too much to make such a mistake.

Strange how Aramis could break himself and Milla off before he had to deal with this.

"We need to jump." I barked the order as soon as I entered the car. The bruised and beaten cadre of benders stared back at me.

"We're traveling at over sixty miles an hour," Marcus said. "We'll die if we jump."

"We'll die if we stay!"

"How many times must I probably die today?" Regulus groaned.

I opened my mouth to tell them all to shut up and take a leap of faith, but something was approaching behind us. A small thing with a thin trail of steam pouring from its small engine.

Esme's bike. But it was not my cousin on the back, driving the damn thing.

It was my wife.