Sometime in the afternoon, as the engine pulled them steadily across a flat stretch of grassland, it began to rain. Huge drops splattered against the windows, leaving diagonal tracks as the wind blew them across the glass. The train tracks traced a long, gradual curve, and Sepha could see the engine far ahead as it tugged them across the plains.

Sepha gazed out over the tall, sepia grass as it undulated beneath the force of the storm. It was almost like being at sea, she thought, although she had never been there. She glanced at Ruhen, as she’d covertly been doing all day, mostly to see if he was glancing at her.

She’d caught him once.

Right now, he was looking out the window; but, no, he actually wasn’t. He was looking at the window, studying it as if someone had written him a message on it. Sepha stared at the window, too, watching the raindrops move across it. It was mesmerizing in a way, but not nearly as interesting as the wind on the grass.

The wind that was suddenly parting the grass in a straight line, shooting like a bullet toward the front of the train.

Sepha’s eyes followed the strange line to a pulsing ball of light that hovered near the tracks ahead of the engine. The light intensified.

Then it burst.

White lightning, jagged and silent, erupted from an epicenter only seconds ahead of the train’s engine. Horrified, Sepha shifted her gaze to meet Ruhen’s. Comprehension sparked in his dark eyes. Destry sucked in a deep breath.

Time slowed.

“Brace yourselves!” Destry screamed, and the other passengers twisted around to see her, shouting confused questions over each other’s heads. Ruhen half-rose from his seat, and people were standing and diving, clutching at whatever they thought would save them.

In all the chaos, Sepha’s eyes were drawn to her homunculus’s stillness.

Her homunculus, who’d be thrown a mile if the train skipped the tracks.

At the same moment that the engine bucked into the air, Sepha launched herself toward the little man and scooped him into her arms. He was heavier than she’d expected, and she teetered forward.

There was a horrible series of metallic squeals as the aftershock of the crash reached the cars ahead. Then it reached theirs.

The car leapt impossibly high off the tracks, throwing Sepha off her feet. For an infinite fraction of a second, Sepha was falling, homunculus and all. Then a tirenium-strong arm snatched her out of the air.

Time sped up again.

The car rocketed off the tracks and into the tall grass. The passengers who hadn’t listened to Destry were tossed this way and that through an avalanche of falling luggage as the car bounded across the plain. The rest of the train’s cars careened off the tracks behind them, and they were all in danger of being crushed to death at any moment.

But Ruhen’s arm was around her waist, and he was holding her tight against the wall of his chest. Lithe and fluid, he absorbed the shocks of the car’s leaping and lurching, and Sepha clutched at him with her free arm.

At last, the train, slowed by the wet grass, slid to a stop. Their car tipped ominously to one side, but then, with an odd motion, clunked back down onto its wheels. A thank-After-we’re-alive moment passed. From far away, Sepha heard Destry asking the car at large if everyone was all right.

Sepha slumped against Ruhen and felt the tension in his body dissolve as he leaned his head forward and loosed his breath in a huff. He smelled like autumn wind wrapped in another strange, wild smell she didn’t recognize.

With a deep breath, Sepha set herself onto her own two feet and eased away from Ruhen. One more deep breath, and she looked up and saw his worried frown.

“Thanks,” she said. Her voice came out as a whisper, hardly louder than her own wildly beating heart.

Then a voice, not the snide one but one that was entirely unfamiliar, said, Him!

Warmth flooded Sepha to the bones and filled her with something so right that everything in her fought against it.

Him! the voice said again, and Sepha’s left palm tingled electric, as if an invisible finger were tracing circles onto it. She clenched her hand into a fist, digging her fingernails into her skin.

Her contract, that smooth, hard thing beside her heart, began to thrum, as if pleased.

As if it had figured out where Sepha’s baby was to come from.

Sepha shook her head, blinking rapidly. Not him! Not anyone, but especially not him!

Ruhen scanned her from head to toe and seemed to deflate. Unclenching his fist from the luggage rack, he eased the homunculus from beneath Sepha’s arm. He set the little man down in his chair and, to Sepha’s surprise, slid his hand down her arm until it circled her wrist.

Her contract thrummed with approval.

“Are you hurt?” His voice sounded hoarse.

Sepha shook her head and focused on a point somewhere over Ruhen’s shoulder. The other passengers were shifting and groaning, hauling themselves to their feet and searching for their luggage.

“You?” she asked, flicking her eyes to his and away again.

He shook his head, rubbing his mouth with his free hand. “That’s three, you know.”

Sepha swallowed. “Three what?”

“Three times you could’ve died in the past three days.” He attempted a smile, but it faded.

Their eyes met, his dark with worry or something else. But her contract was still thrumming and someone had attacked their godsdamned train—

“Did you see what happened?” Ruhen asked at the same time that Sepha said, “I should go help Destry.”

“I’ll come too,” he said quickly.

“No!” Sepha almost shrieked. “No, just—just stay and watch my homunculus, if you don’t mind.”

And she patted his shoulder like an idiot, then looked around for Destry, who was suddenly nowhere to be found.

Suspecting that Destry would be in the middle of things, Sepha clambered off the train and into the forceful wind. The damp air smelled of ozone and crushed grass. It cleared the cobwebs from her head and stilled her contract, and she quickly spotted a group of people huddled near the engine. Sure enough, there was Destry’s white-blond hair, bright against the storm’s darkness.

Aided by the wind at her back, Sepha approached the huddle. A short woman dressed in the characteristic Tirenian blue of a train engineer jumped down from the engine, looking sick. “The driver’s dead,” she shouted, holding her hat onto her head. “Derailment at full speed like that, I couldn’t hope otherwise, but … he’s dead.”

Destry leapt up into the engine to see for herself and momentarily reappeared, her face tight. “A quick death, at least,” was all she said.

One man dead, and maybe more. Sepha felt much too old and simultaneously not nearly old enough to deal with this. She wondered what had gone through the man’s mind in the last few seconds of his life, when he saw the strange light erupt over the tracks.

With dawning comprehension, Sepha ran back past the zig-zagging line of cars toward the tracks. Then she saw it: an enormous crater where the tracks had been. On either side were knotted metal ribbons, sticking up in the air like a dead spider’s legs.

No natural explosion could’ve done this. This was magic, and it didn’t take a magician to realize it.

Sepha’s right hand began to ache with a bone-deep pain that sent her mind racing back to Cell Two-Seven. To the searing heat of the undead magician taking her hand between his.

Something like the echo of a whisper drew Sepha’s eyes to the swaying grass on the opposite side of the tracks. Standing barely higher than the grass was the undead magician himself. He was leering at Destry with manic eyes, baring every single tooth.

A familiar windmilling, howling panic took over, freezing Sepha in place. What did he want—and why was he here?

Then the magician opened his mouth, and Sepha realized what was about to happen.

“Look out!” Sepha screamed as a burst of red light like an electric fire arced toward the incapacitated engine and the huddled men and women.

There was a faint pulse, and a tall metal tree erupted from the crowd, forming a protective wall of branches between them and the electric fire.

The fire tore through the air. It snapped and sparked against the metal branches, scorching the grass at the base of the tree and making Destry’s hair stand on end, but the defense was effective. The magician’s attack hadn’t harmed anyone.

The heavy rain, which had decreased to an annoying, sharp mist, suddenly returned in full force. The group of people scattered, leaving Destry crouching alone behind her tree.

Destry pulled two alchems from her holster and placed them on the ground. She reached for her holster again, this time producing two large ingots, and pressed them onto the waiting alchems.

As quickly as she’d moved, Destry was too slow.

The magician’s second attack came just as Destry placed a hand on each alchem. With a garbled shout, he conjured a new fire. This one was blue and bestial, shaped like an enormous crow with wickedly sharp talons. It shot deadly quick toward Destry, and Sepha knew that Destry was going to die.

But then there was a loud, electric splash. The magician’s attack spiraled into the sky and dissipated. Through the water that ran down her forehead and into her eyes, Sepha could hardly make out what was happening. It had seemed, just for a moment, that the rain had formed a wall of its own, one that the fire had been unable to penetrate. As if the rain itself was protecting Destry from the attack.

The rain, or a second magician, joining the fight for reasons of their own.

Sepha looked wildly around, but only saw Destry and the huddled mass of passengers near the back of the train. Maybe the other magician was hiding in the grass too—

So easily distracted, are you? whispered the snide voice, and Sepha snapped her gaze back toward Destry.

With a double pulse, Destry stood and assembled what looked like a small cannon. She’d used two alchems at the same time!

Sprinting away from her tree’s protection, Destry produced a large bullet from her holster. She loaded it into the barrel and hoisted the cannon onto her shoulder. She yanked on the pull and was nearly thrown backward as the round exploded from the cannon. There was a magnificent explosion across the tracks, but Destry had overshot the homunculus.

His body seized as he shouted his next attack.

The ground beneath Destry punched upward, creating a perfectly cylindrical pillar of earth. Destry rocketed into the air, spinning wildly as she clutched her cannon, then came down in an uncontrolled freefall.

“No!” Sepha screamed. She forced herself to ignore her howling panic and sprinted toward the alchems Destry had left behind. She couldn’t stand by while the homunculus killed Destry!

But before Sepha could reach the alchems, Destry thudded into the muddy grass, softening her fall with a clumsy roll. Dazed, she shook her head, got to her knees, and fired off another round at the homunculus. This time, Destry aimed true. By the time the explosion and the resultant ball of fire had dissipated, the magician was gone.

Gone. But, Sepha sensed, not dead.

“Sepha!”

It was Destry. She was stalking toward Sepha and looked angry enough to attack her, now that the homunculus was gone.

“What are you doing out here?” Destry glared at Sepha. “Get back with the rest of the passengers and stay there!”

“I wanted to help,” Sepha protested.

“You were more likely to get killed than to help!” Destry snapped. “You don’t know how to fight. You’ve got no metal, and I’ll bet you don’t even have any alchems on hand!”

Sepha flinched and took a step backward. Destry might as well have slapped her.

Useless, crooned the snide voice. Already in everyone’s way.

Destry huffed and continued, quieter, “Just go wait by the railcar. I have to take care of this situation.”

Soaked to the bone, Sepha trudged back to where the passengers were huddled beside the railcars. When she joined them, they greeted her frantically.

“Was that a magician?”

“Are we going to die?”

“We’ll miss our appointments!”

Sepha ignored them all and squelched over to where Ruhen stood beside her homunculus.

“Sepha,” Ruhen said. “What just happened?”

Sepha was cold and empty. The tentative joy of the morning had vanished, and her life was once again a range of mountainous problems she didn’t know how to solve. “I don’t know,” she said.

Ignoring Ruhen’s concerned gaze, she closed her eyes and crossed her arms, shielding herself from the torrential rain.

What had just happened?

 

 

 

 

Several hours later, the train was back on the tracks and clacking along as if nothing had happened. Destry and the train’s crew had managed, through no small alchemical and mechanical feat, to finagle the train back onto the tracks, and even to fix the tracks themselves. The engine, miraculously, had worked well enough to wheeze to the next train station, where it was replaced with a working one.

“All’s well that ends well,” Sepha had heard another passenger say.

But it hadn’t ended well. Two homunculi in one of the baggage cars had been crushed to death during the derailment. Their owner had ordered their bodies discarded beside the tracks.

Sepha’s own homunculus, healthy and whole, was sleeping in the chair she’d claimed for him. Buying him that ticket had saved his life, and so he was truly hers now, in the ancient sense that the saving of a life created a sacred bond. Her tiny man, proportioned exactly like a normal adult. Only smaller. And a little strange.

And that was all it took to make an entire race enslaveable. Discardable.

Those two homunculi had died because they were baggage, and because the undead magician had attacked. Three more deaths because of Sepha. She felt numb from the thought of it.

Why had he done it?

If he needed a body so badly, why would he attack her? But he hadn’t really attacked her, had he? He had attacked the train and the crowd of people who were trying to fix it. He had attacked Destry.

And what had happened during Destry’s fight, when that strange wall of water had deflected the homunculus’s second attack? Had Sepha only imagined it in the downpour, or had there been a third person involved in the fight, unobserved by anyone? But who here could’ve done it, and why would they hide?

Sepha’s eyes traveled around the passenger car. Everyone had gone outside during the fight. It could’ve been any of them.

Or none of them.

She’d been in such a panicked state that she might’ve imagined it. Now that she tried to remember the series of events more precisely, her certainty began to slip. She’d been nearly blinded by the rain, and in such a panic. Gods, she was useless.

Then the small worry that had been lurking in the back of her mind finally demanded her full attention.

Destry must have seen the undead magician.

Ruhen was already asking questions.

What was she going to tell them? What was she going to do when she arrived at the Institute, to deflect the questions she knew would come? How did you do it? Will you do it again? Will you teach us how?

Sepha hunched over and rested her elbows on her knees. She flexed her right hand, remembering the way it had ached just before she’d spotted the magician. He’d worked some sort of magic so he could find her. Maybe whatever he’d done was a sort of bond, just like the contract. A sort of bond, perhaps, that would make her hand ache whenever he was near. If so, at least she’d have a warning if he showed up again.

Sepha sighed and sat up, leaning against the back of her seat.

Destry pounced on the opportunity to speak. “Sepha, don’t be frightened,” she said, “but that was a magician back there.”

“I know,” Sepha said, and then wondered if she should’ve lied.

“I only wish he hadn’t been crouching in the grass,” Destry continued, tugging on the wrist of one glove and then flexing both hands, trying to keep the wet leather supple. “I couldn’t get a good look at him. Wouldn’t know him if he passed me on the street.”

Had Destry really not seen him? The constricted feeling in Sepha’s chest began to release. Perhaps she wouldn’t have to explain everything immediately, after all.

Ruhen, who’d been staring out the window, looked at Destry. “How do you know it wasn’t another alchemist?” he asked.

“He didn’t use alchems,” she said. The word she hadn’t said, “obviously,” hung in the air between them.

“Why do you think he attacked us?” Sepha asked, risking a half-glance at Destry.

“The Magistrate and her council,” Destry said, choosing each word with slow deliberation, “posit that causing fear and chaos is in the nature of magicians. That’s why they’ve worked so tirelessly to eradicate them. And as the only person on this train who’s ever dealt with magicians before today, I have to say they may be correct.”

“Dealt with?” Sepha asked.

Destry fixed her blue eyes on Sepha’s hazel ones and said, “Finding and incapacitating magicians was my primary task for a few years. I was good enough at fighting magicians that I was always on the teams that went out to capture them.”

“You’ve captured magicians before?” Sepha asked. Hope, less lovely than joy but far more tenacious, began to take root.

“Yes,” Destry said. “Magicians are more powerful than alchemists, but there are ways of getting their own natures to work to my advantage.”

Despite herself, despite her secret, Sepha sighed. “That’s a relief,” she said. “I always thought they were indestructible.”

“They’re not,” Destry said. “I know it firsthand. It’s all a matter of finding that individual magician’s strength, then keeping them away from whatever it happens to be. Once you learn to do that, you can neutralize their magic completely. It cripples them.”

“What do you mean, their strength?” Sepha felt breathless, jittery.

Destry frowned down at her Guild ring. “I’m not sure how it works,” she said, “but each one seems to draw power from certain things around them. Earth or plants or even the air. And whenever they’re away from that thing, their power begins to fade. Then it becomes a waiting game.” At Sepha’s confused look, Destry smiled and said, “They can run out of magic, but we can’t run out of alchemy. Any alchemist can defeat any magician in a one-on-one fight, if they’re smart and manage to survive until the magician’s power runs out.”

Sepha blinked. “Oh.”

Across from Sepha, the homunculus was dozing, his head bobbing with the motion of the car. Ruhen was staring out the window again, looking tired and bored. With a suppressed yawn, he leaned his head back against his seat and closed his eyes. Destry pulled a small ingot from her holster and began passing it from one gloved hand to the other.

None of them realized that everything had just changed.

Magicians could be defeated. Which meant that if Sepha failed to create a body for the undead magician, she might still have a chance to save her firstborn. Might even have a chance to avoid having a firstborn at all.

It was small, the hope this gave her. But it was hope, and it was something.