70

It was several kilos on the open plain before they could see the train, the hot sun glaring down on them. Nália had pushed the ’goiz up to fire gear, engine running hot but holding together. After uncounted days trapped in that ice room, feeling the world only through Wenthi, or being trapped in the darkness of whatever void the Witch had put her in, it felt glorious to be not only fully in her body, but in her own clothes, on her beautiful cycle. She had the open country in front of her, nearly a full tank of petrol, and felt like she could go forever.

Which was strange. Her body should have been a weak mess. But it was like Wenthi was somehow pouring strength into her. Like he could share that as much as they could share sensations and feelings.

She’d love to think more about that, but there was the train. Time to get to work.

“What are you feeling on there?” Wenthi asked her.

“Static,” she said. “The whole thing. Am I imagining it or—”

“It’s like the train is made of ice rooms,” he said.

“Why would they do that?” They were pushing closer and closer; at this rate they would be right up next to it in a few swipes. But they had no sense of what was going on, where the Fists were, how many guards there were.

“Varazina,” Wenthi said. “Penda probably doesn’t even need to take mushroom—”

“And they want to contain her power.”

It made sense. The last thing they needed was her calling out on the radio for hundreds of saviors. Maybe that’s what took them this long to sentence them all and ship them out to the oil fields; they needed to get the train ready for the transfer.

“What’s the plan?” she asked.

“I’d say stop the train, neutralize any guards, free everyone on the train.”

“There’s a big ‘and after that?’ question to be asked, you know.”

“As in . . . where we stand?” he asked. “What do I do next? Can’t go back to my old life.”

“I was more thinking we’ll be in the middle of nowhere and will probably need to use the train to get back to the city.”

“Right,” he said. They were coming up closer and closer to the train now. No sign of patrol on the outside, either riding in escort or taking guard posts along the top of the train.

“So however we stop the train, it can’t be a permanent stop, you know?”

“Good point. You got an idea?”

“Spirits watch over me, because I do,” she said. “Try to keep up.”

She gunned her cycle into fire gear and went off. One-eighty. One-ninety-two. Two-hundred-four.

The burst of speed caused her senses to explode, like flowers unfolding in bloom. She could feel her way back to the city, to the oil derricks and the camps ahead—the pain and suffering of the people there, the ones who died in the fire, and the ones who lived—and the expanse of the mushroom beneath them. It was almost too intense for her to bear, except she had Wenthi to anchor her.

And the blaring, spiky static coming off of the train. What had Shebiruht said the ice room was made with? Mycopsilaria sehosi. The one from Sehosia. It blocked the other mushrooms. Blocked the signal. Blocked connection. It even felt . . . angry from the speed of the train. She couldn’t push through that to the inside of the train cars. Every car of the train was laced with it.

But not the engine. Or the engineer running the train.

How easy it was now, especially at this speed, to slip herself into him, to take control of his arm, to pull from his memory how the controls worked. Pull the brake, the wheels screeched. Too hard, too fast. She had to ease up on the brake. Else the train would derail.

“You have it?” Wenthi asked, his phantom avatar appearing next to her in the engine room.

“I do,” she said. “But it’s going to take a few swipes to get us actually stopped. I need to keep focus on holding control over him while keeping pace on the cycle.”

“Keep on it,” he said. “But you’ll probably have unwanted company.”

She checked the engineer’s body. Sidearm at his hip. “I can handle it.”

“Then I’ll find our friends.”

“Are they, Wenthi?” she asked. “Our friends? They never met me, not really, or the real you. Are you going to be straight with them?”

“I’m going to have to be,” he said. “Like I said, no going back.”

His avatar vanished, and she could feel the engineer struggling to get control over himself. Not today, friend. She poured all she had to hold on to him for a few swipes more.