6. Lost Time

She looks at Elena and the silence between them stretches taut.

"Zhang!" A yell from the other end of the carriage makes her jump. Weiwei scrambles down the ladder before the voice can get any closer.

"There's unrest in First, you're needed," says a steward.

"I'll be along in a moment," she says. Don't look up, she tells herself. Don't look up or he'll look up too.

"Now," he says.

Mutely, she follows him. At her back, she is sure she can feel slivers of lichen, reaching out to follow her. She wishes her head would stop aching, but the roar of the train will not be stilled, nor will Elena's voice in her head. "There is nothing that can hold them back anymore." She trails after the steward into the saloon car, where the second steward is helpless in the face of the Countess's onslaught.

"I demand to see her immediately," she is saying.

"But madam, the doctor says—"

"What does he know? She was perfectly well yesterday, and I see no reason why she should be denied visitors."

With a sharp stab of foreboding, Weiwei looks around to see who is missing. Marya Petrovna. Guilt floods over her. The Professor had warned her—"Tell her to be careful." But she had ignored him. She had ignored Marya Petrovna, and now she has been taken away. Was she really ill? She had been worried that the widow would discover Elena, with her questions and curiosity, but now she suspects that there is something else that she has been looking for.

The saloon car is loud with speculation.

"But are we not in danger ourselves, if we have been dining with her all this time?" someone is saying. "Can we really be sure it is not contagious?"

"I feel quite well, but for a slight headache that I'm sure is simply worry on her behalf…"

"I for one would like to know why those gentlemen thought it right to spirit her away like that…"

"It is the safest place for her, if she is ill…"

"Will you do something, my dear?" The Countess turns her attention to Weiwei, ignoring the steward. "She was taken away late at night, it is really most odd."

"I'm sure it's just a precaution, for her health. The doctor is used to treating the sickness," says Weiwei, without much conviction.

The Countess looks at her shrewdly. "It is not the sickness I am worried about," she says, in a voice low enough for only Weiwei to hear.

Weiwei hurries back through the sleeping carriages toward the infirmary, resolving to put right her failure to speak to Marya, but halfway along she sees Alexei leaving Henry Grey's cabin. Sneaking, she thinks, but then she sees his expression, and freezes. His eyes are red and there is such despair on his face that she is too shocked to try to hide or turn in the opposite direction, pretending she hasn't seen him. He looks at her and wipes his eyes, angrily. "What is it now?" His uniform is creased and untidy, and there is stubble on his chin. "For the love of iron, Zhang, what are you staring at?"

The roughness in his voice stings her. "What were you doing in there?" she demands.

"He—" He stops, then puts his face in his hands and leans back against the wall. "It's my fault," he says, his voice muffled.

"What do you mean?"

He takes his hands away and gestures to the mold on the windows. "All of this, it's my fault—the danger I put you in."

"It's nothing to do with you," she says, touching his arm.

He looks at her, the lines on his forehead deepening, then says, in a rush of words, "I gave Grey the keys to get out. It's because of me that you nearly died, that the Captain risked her life to bring you back, that everything is changing. It was me who let the Wastelands in." He kneels to scrabble at the carpet with his fingernails.

"Stop! What are you doing? You'll hurt yourself." She tries to pull him away but he is much stronger.

"Look!"

His scrabbling has revealed thin white threads, snaking up from the floor. She stumbles backward as they move toward her, rising up as if tasting the air. She wishes she could talk to him like she always used to. Thoughtlessly, endlessly, like the little sister he complained that she resembled. But it's hard to tear her eyes from the white threads, from their undulating motion, their sense of purpose.

"Nothing that is happening is your fault," she says, urgently.

"You can't know that."

But I can,she wants to say. I do know.

They stare at each other, and in the silence an alarm starts to scream.

The Breach alarm. They have heard it only in drills, but still, on bad nights she has woken up, convinced she has heard it ringing through the train. An insistent, discordant jangling, telling the crew to get the First Class passengers to their cabins, Third Class to their bunks. Telling them to muster in the crew mess. What will Elena do? Will she be afraid?

Most are pale, and scared, and trying to pretend not to be, though Alexei looks worse than all of them; she sees heads turning toward him, feels him hunch into himself. She wants to squeeze his arm in reassurance but can't seem to make herself move, not when there are so many terrors piling one upon the other that it takes all her willpower to simply stay standing.

The Cartographer slips through the door. She has seen him so little on this crossing that his appearance is a shock. There is exhaustion on his face, as if it has been days since he has slept.

The alarm falls silent, and the Captain enters.

There is an audible stir among the crew. This must be the first time some of them have seen her face to face since the crossing began, realizes Weiwei. But the anger and confusion felt earlier in the crossing have turned into something else—even amidst the rumors of illness and incapacity, new stories of what happened outside have spread through the train like the flickers of Valentin's Fire. As they were crossing the line Weiwei had heard the kitchen boys describe how the Captain had rescued Henry Grey from the jaws of a Wastelands giant, fighting it off with her bare hands. And so her mythology grows.

But here she is, stern and austere, and the crew stand to attention, buttoning up undone collars and pulling down shirtsleeves. Weiwei tries to set her face in a neutral expression but when the Captain's gaze meets hers she drops her eyes. She feels Alexei clench and unclench his hands.

The Captain waits until a few last stragglers have entered. "Please sit," she says. Then she begins, without preamble, to explain that growths have been found inside the train, origin and classification unknown. Her voice is calm. She is as strong and unmoving as ever. It could feel, almost, as if nothing has changed, that order has been restored at last.

Weiwei remembers what she saw when she touched the lichen—that the Captain was afraid—though she knows that all the crew would swear that there was nothing in the world that the woman standing in front of them feared.

Disquiet ripples through the carriage as the meaning of the Captain's words sinks in, but she holds up her hand for silence. "It goes without saying that you must avoid touching anything. Our Repair team is already at work. But we must remain vigilant. Anything out of place must be reported directly to me. From now on, crew members will be assigned carriages to patrol, so that we have eyes on all parts of the train at all times. Breach protocol will apply."

The silence thickens. Breach protocol, allowing for the use of "extraordinary measures," of whatever means necessary to protect the train.

The Captain glances into the corner of the carriage and Weiwei turns to see the Crows, melting into the shadows. A small but discernible space has been left around them. They will be preparing for the worst, she realizes. The possibility that no one wants to think about. The sealing of the doors, the moving of the train to a special yard, out of sight of the Company and any well-bred visitors to the Wall. The slow falling of silence. The older crew members say that the doctor keeps a special medicine in his cabin—a draft that will ease your passing, like closing your eyes in a snowfall. But there is not enough for everyone, they say, only for the lucky ones, the ones able to hasten the end. Everyone else must wait, as the air grows stale, as it runs out completely.

She shakes the thought from her head.

When the Captain dismisses them Weiwei elbows Alexei. "Come with me," she says, and drags him behind her as she runs after the Cartographer, who is already striding away down the corridor. "Marya Petrovna has been taken to the infirmary," she calls.

Suzuki turns, what little color he had in his cheeks vanishing. "What?"

"They say it's Wastelands sickness, though the Countess seems to think this is dubious. I thought you might want to—"

"When?"

"Last night. Very suddenly, apparently." She thinks he's about to rush there immediately—Why? What is she to you?—but she sees him hesitate and follows his gaze. The Crows are standing in the doorway, watching them. Suzuki draws in a breath.

"Why is she important?" Weiwei demands, in a low voice. "Tell me or I will tell them that I believe she's a spy. That I've seen her sneaking around, that she asks too many questions."

Suzuki holds her gaze. Then he says, "Follow me."

They follow him into the crew sleeping carriage, which he checks is empty, then turns to them, pulling down the sleeves of his shirt, even though most of the crew have rolled up their sleeves in the heat, against all rules. Even now, she thinks, even though he looks about ready to fall apart, the Cartographer follows the rules.

"I don't understand," says Alexei, looking from one of them to the other. "What's this passenger got to do with you?"

"She has to do with all of us," says Suzuki.

Weiwei thinks about the young widow and the questions she has asked, all the places she has found her. "She wanted to know about the last crossing. She wanted…" She stops, realization dawning. Marya Petrovna, stumbling into Third Class, sneaking off to see the Cartographer, always asking questions. "She is something to do with Anton Ivanovich, isn't she?"

Suzuki's shoulders slump. She sees him making a decision, letting go. "His daughter," he says.

Alexei leans back against the wall, letting out a long whistle.

"The Professor knows; he wanted to warn her," says Weiwei. "But I didn't…" She has been too selfish. Too selfish and cowardly to try to help anyone else; not Marya, not Alexei. She has thought only of herself, this whole time. Always herself, before the crew or the passengers. Before the train.

The humming in her head, in her bones, grows louder. She thinks she can feel the pulsing of the lichen in the far corner of the carriage. Had any of them tried hard enough to defend the glassmaker, when the time had come to apportion blame? Or had they just been relieved that the burden on the rest of them had been lifted?

"We are all complicit," says Suzuki. "But I most of all. Anton Ivan- ovich tried to save us from this." He gestures to the white threads that have crept across the wall while they have been speaking. "He was afraid that we had pushed the train too far. Even before the last crossing. He was right." And they listen as he tells them what the glassmaker's new telescope had revealed, and what they had seen on the last crossing, and it all fits in with Elena's words: "There is nothing that can hold them back anymore." Anton Ivanovich had seen what she had not. And now it is too late.

"And Marya?" demands Alexei.

"She has proof that her father tried to warn the Company," says Suzuki. "They have searched her cabin but I don't believe they have found anything." He starts to walk away, toward the opposite end of the carriage.

"Where are you going?"

"To find Marya Antonovna. To start atoning."

"She will think it's too late," says Alexei, his voice cold.

Suzuki stops. He says, "And she will be right."

He carries on, and Weiwei grabs Alexei's wrist. "Come on," she says, and as they reach the end of the carriage she looks up at her bunk, praying to the gods of the rail that Elena is hidden there, quiet and safe. She can see no sign of the stowaway, but the lichen has spread further across the wall, even in so short a time. It will be impossible to miss it, soon, but Alexei is looking instead at the clock beside the door.

"It's stopped," he says. "The one in the mess has stopped too."

They have fallen out of time.