7. Decisions, Risks

He looks like he is sleeping,thinks Weiwei, cushioned by moss and leaves.

"He wasn't well," says Marya Antonovna. "There was nothing we could do for him." She folds Henry Grey's hands across his chest. Elena is blinking rapidly, her forehead creased into a frown. Weiwei and Alexei stand like mourners looking down into a grave.

"I should have done something," says Alexei. "Even in Beijing he wasn't well—there was something wrong with his stomach; the doctors told him to be careful."

"I'm not sure he would have listened," says Marya.

No,thinks Weiwei. He wasn't that kind of man. Too certain in his own beliefs, too sure of his own place in the complex machinery of the world.

She nudges what is left of Mr. Petrov and Mr. Li with her foot. Amidst the pile of feathers and twigs and stones, bright shoe buckles clink. Train justice. But is it enough, she wonders, for Marya Antonovna? The glassmaker's daughter has the stunned, bewildered look of a survivor of an accident, who has unexpectedly found herself saved. Weiwei is trying to find something to say when Suzuki enters and, to her amazement, takes Marya into his arms.

"I know I said I would not follow," he begins, but Marya just shakes her head and smiles, and there is some unspoken communication between them that Weiwei can't understand but that feels too intensely private to watch, and she turns away, quickly, only to see that Elena has no such qualms and is staring at them with interest.

"Come," says Weiwei, pulling her away. There is so little time left.

They leave Grey already cradled by roots and tendrils, pulling him down into the earth. They enter the crew mess, where the musician stands on a chair, playing a waltz in a minor key that is happy and unbearably sad at the same time. Vassily is pouring drinks from bottles turned silver and gold by the light filtering through the trees, and the passengers are dancing, First Class and Third Class together, in fine silks and rough cloth, all divisions forgotten in this suspended time. Weiwei sees Sophie LaFontaine, dancing by herself, her eyes closed. She sees the scientific gentlemen and the traders dancing together, arms around each other. She sees the brothers from the South raise their glasses and empty them in one gulp. She sees branches of ivy curl their way around the lamps, sees lichen creep across the ceiling, silver and brilliant blue.

Elena does not hide anymore. She is part of the changes and the passengers seem unafraid of her. She offers her hand to the Countess, who throws back her head in a peal of laughter and says, "I am too old, young woman, but Vera will take up your offer." The maid's face is uncertain as Elena takes her into the waltz, but the music transforms into a jig, fast and merry, and her expression turns to exhilaration, and Elena is moving from passenger to passenger until she reaches Weiwei, who thinks of the girl rising from the water. Coming back to life.

"To our journey's end!" cries a voice, and glasses are raised, and someone is weeping, and the cleric Yuri Petrovich is intoning a prayer but he is drowned out by the musician, who plays faster and louder, and Weiwei lets herself be whirled into the dance by Elena, around and around until she is laughing and dizzy and it feels almost like they are up in the open skylight again, that feeling of glorious release.

"Look!"

A string snaps on the musician's violin. The dance ends with a sudden, jarring chord. The dancers move apart.

"What are they doing?" Alexei has cleared one of the windows and is pointing outside, at the guards running back from the train, their guns on their shoulders, at others massing beneath the spotlights, the rain making their silhouettes flicker. It is churning the Vigil grounds into mud.

"Twelve hours have not passed, surely?" Weiwei says, still breathless.

Alexei looks up toward the water clock and she sees his back stiffen.

"What's wrong?" She follows his gaze. "That's not—" The basin the water pours into is far fuller than it should be.

"They've sped up the clock," he says. "They've poured away the hours. The Vigil is ending."

The train is about to be sealed up.

Alexei slams his palms against the window. There is uproar in the carriage. Weiwei feels her chest constrict, as if the air is already growing stale.

"You have to go now, Elena, now!" she says, shouting above the noise. She takes the stowaway's hand; she will drag her to the skylight if necessary; she will not allow her to stay entombed with them, not after everything. The urgency sets off a humming beneath her skin, a humming in her bones, as though the train is alive again, as though its heart has started beating.

"Weiwei," says Elena, and it is the first time she has used her name, though she is pulling away from her, standing her ground. "Listen."

"There's no time—"

"Listen!"

Elena's voice silences the carriage. And Weiwei feels it. She feels the pull of the furnace, its mouth hungry for coal and heat, the wheels hungry for the miles to come, for the rail stretching ahead. She feels the train waking up.

The Cartographer and Marya appear.

"Something is happening," Suzuki says, rolling up his sleeves and holding out his arms, and Weiwei sees that there are marks, almost like the tattoos that the engineers give themselves after each of their crossings. Yet these are different—thin lines and markings like a map. She sees Alexei staring as well.

"It's pulling," says Suzuki, and they watch as the map on his skin seems to shift, just a fraction, as if a photograph has slid just out of focus. "Can you feel it?" he says to Weiwei, and she can, she can. She can feel the train and the earth and the earth and the train, all connected. She can feel the humming in her bones becoming a roar.

"It wants to go," she says. "It wants to be moving." She turns to the rest of them. "And what is stopping us? Are we not stronger than anything out there?" She gestures at the guards and the Vigil yard. "We boast that we are the biggest, the strongest train ever built. What can stop us if we wish to go?"

"The gates can stop us," says Alexei. "If we were travelling at our full speed, perhaps we could break through, but it would be impossible now."

Elena taps her fingers on the window. "But if the gates were open?" she says.

They find the Captain where Weiwei was sure she would be— in the cab, where the walls gleam in iridescent greens and blues, shot through with seams of orange, as if heat pulses through them. Dry, sharp fingers of pale lichen encircle the furnace itself. The Captain sits on one of the stokers' stools, staring into the coals, just as Weiwei has seen her do on quiet nights on earlier crossings, as if searching for messages in the flames. But the coals are silent and cooling now, and the Captain's shoulders are slumped in defeat. She doesn't raise her head as their little group enters.

"Captain?" She feels a stab of doubt, then sees Elena gazing around the cab in delight, and the walls shimmering, and the faint glow of embers in the darkness of the furnace. She stands to attention before the Captain, and she tells her their plan, and as she comes to the end, the Captain raises her head, looks around and stands, as if she is waking from a dream. "If I understand you correctly, then what you are proposing is…" She shakes her head. "Even if we could do it, we would be changing the course of… everything. It cannot be our decision to make."

"Then whose decision should it be?" Marya's voice has changed, thinks Weiwei, now that she is not pretending anymore. She looks at Elena. "What do you think?" she says.

"I can help," says Elena. "I can open the gates, I know what to do. Remember that I was the garrison ghost. I watched and learned, I can give you time." Her eyes are bright, unquestioning, and Weiwei realizes that it is not only Marya who has changed. There is something different about Elena. She is more certain, more present. As if a weight has been lifted, a decision made. "I will hide behind the rain, they won't see me." Elena turns to Weiwei. "You know what I can do. Please, let me help."

They are looking at the Captain. Alexei, Suzuki, Marya—they are all waiting for her judgment. Such is her power, still.

The lines on the Captain's face deepen. She leans against the wall, as if asking the train to hold her up, for just a little longer. She has finished defying the Wastelands, realizes Weiwei.

"Is this truly a risk you would take for us?" says the Captain to Elena.

"Yes," says Elena. She looks at Weiwei. "Yes," she says, again.