The Mark of the Dragonfly (10 page)

Piper thought about it. She didn’t want to give him her full name, even though she didn’t think it was smart to push him much further. The fact that he seemed suddenly angrier surprised her. She knew he didn’t fully believe their story, but why should he care about taking on a couple of extra passengers? It didn’t cost him anything. “I’m Piper. This is Anna.”

“Fine, then.” The boy turned to the guards. “You can go. I’ll take care of things from here.”

“Are you sure?” one of the guards said, eyeing the girls warily.

The boy nodded. “I can handle them.” He looked at Piper and Anna. His expression was neutral now, but Piper sensed the anger still simmering beneath the surface. Where did it come from? “I’ll show you to your private car,” he said.

Piper couldn’t believe the ploy had worked. The relief that came over her left her feeling shaky. They were going to get out of this. “Thank you,” she said, then realized what she’d just heard. “Wait, hold on, did you say our private car?”

The boy nodded at Anna. “Anyone who has the mark of the Dragonfly is treated as a representative of King Aron himself,” he said formally, as if he were in the presence of the king. “He or she is entitled to full access of the train and all its services for as long as necessary. I do wish you hadn’t waited so long to make your identities
known,” he added with a hint of scorn in his voice as he turned to Piper. “We might have avoided all this unpleasantness.”

Piper realized he was still suspicious of her, even after seeing the tattoo and knowing Anna was under the king’s protection. Piper couldn’t help it. Her anger flared. It was she who didn’t fit into the picture. “I told you our business is secret, and even if it wasn’t, maybe we didn’t trust that you’d let someone like me on the train. How many scrappers do you take on as passengers up here in the mountains?”

“None,” the boy said flatly. Oh yes, he was suspicious of her all right. “But as long as you’re with her, you’re welcome here too.” His tone left Piper no doubt that if Anna weren’t here, he’d take great pleasure in throwing her off the train himself. “My name is Gee,” the boy continued. “I’m in charge of security. If you need anything while you’re here, talk to me. Now, if you’ll follow me.”

Without waiting for them to reply, Gee strode off quickly toward the front of the train. He was all business, and judging by how fast he was moving, he was clearly anxious to get rid of them. Piper and Anna hurried to follow, Anna sticking close to Piper’s side as if she was afraid Piper was going to suddenly disappear.

“Will we be safe now?” Anna whispered.

Piper didn’t know. She didn’t want to lie, but she also didn’t want to frighten the girl any more than she had to.
“It looks like for the moment. We caught some luck back there,” Piper said. She glanced at Gee’s back, the rigid set of his shoulders. “I think he likes us.”

Anna brightened. “Really?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Piper said, trying to sound cheerful.
Not at all
.

As they walked, Piper felt the train begin to move. The whistle blew a final time. After passing through another storage car, they entered the passenger section. Several passengers and train personnel milled about, turning the seats from their upright daytime positions into upper and lower beds with privacy curtains for nighttime sleeping. Piper looked out the windows to see the houses of the scrap town slowly passing by, fewer and fewer until they were clear of them.

That was it. In another minute, they’d left Scrap Town Sixteen behind. Piper realized with a jolt that her dearest dream—to ride out of the scrap town—had come true in a heartbeat and she’d nearly missed it. She stopped and stared out the window, watching the snow-covered hills roll by and the town get smaller in the distance.

And then it dawned on her what she was really leaving. Micah was back there too, and every minute she was getting farther away from him. The realization hit Piper, and she put her hand against the cold window, staring back at the town as loss gripped her chest. Everything had happened so fast, she hadn’t realized what leaving the scrap town would actually mean. She was leaving
Micah behind, and she hadn’t even gotten to see him wake up. She wouldn’t be there to see that he recovered from his injuries. Worse than that, Micah wouldn’t know what happened to her. He would wake up and find out she was gone, with no explanation and her house a shambles. He would be so worried about her.

“Piper, what’s wrong?” Anna stopped a little ahead of her. Gee stopped too and turned back to wait for them. He sighed impatiently but said nothing.

“I’m all right. I was just looking at the scenery.” With an effort, Piper turned away from the window and caught up with them, but her legs felt shaky, her steps uncertain. She was free of the scrap town, but it wasn’t the clean break she’d thought it would be when she used to dream about leaving. She was going to miss Micah terribly.

Gee led them through several more passenger cars and common areas until they reached a car near the front of the train. A narrow hallway ran the length of the left-hand side, but the entire right side was enclosed. Piper assumed it was another passenger car set up for nighttime, but this one had real walls instead of privacy curtains. Gee opened the one door to the enclosure and stood aside to let them go in.

Piper’s mouth fell slack as she entered. They stood in a large private suite. To her right was a sitting area with a plush sofa bolted to the floor. Opposite was a small polished dining table flanked by two chairs.
Outside the huge windows, the scenery raced by as the train picked up speed. Near the front of the suite were two plump berths, upper and lower, and a private washroom. Piper’s tiny house could have fit into the car a couple of times.

“Is this acceptable?” Gee asked stiffly. His tone still carried traces of anger.

Piper could only nod. She was too busy staring at the beds, the furniture, and the bowl of apples, oranges, and grapes sitting on the dining table. Without another word, Gee turned and left the suite, slamming the door much harder than necessary.

Anna glanced at Piper uncertainly. “It really doesn’t seem like he likes us,” she observed.

“I think you’re right.” Piper sighed. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I’m just happy we made it this far. Might as well make ourselves comfortable.” She shook her head. She still couldn’t believe the size of the room.

Anna grabbed an apple from the bowl of fruit on the table and bit into it eagerly. Juice dripped down her chin. “This tastes amazing.” She offered an orange to Piper, but Piper shook her head. She knew she should eat, but she wasn’t at all hungry. After everything that had happened, her stomach just wouldn’t settle down.

Dropping her satchel, she walked over to the sofa and knelt on the cushions, leaning against the sofa back so she could press her cheek against the window. She was trying to look back at the scrap town.

She told herself it was only Micah she missed, not the town itself. Number Sixteen wasn’t home. The only real connection she had with the place was in the memories she’d shared with her father, and he was gone. Her mother had died when Piper was too young to remember her.

Nothing should be holding her back. She was safe, she had a bed to sleep in—a very nice bed—and she was on her way to the capital. Her plans for her future hadn’t changed. In fact, they’d improved. A private suite for the trip to Noveen. Arno Weir would have swallowed his tongue at seeing those fluffy sofa cushions. And she would get to see a nice little slice of the world along the way. Once Anna was safely home, Piper would collect her reward and set off to find work as a machinist, just like she’d planned. The whole thing felt like a dream.

An image of the man from the caravan flashed through Piper’s mind, and fear took hold of her.

Piper gripped the sofa back and pressed her forehead against the window. Her breath peppered the glass with little fog clouds. All right, so maybe things weren’t perfect. Maybe she’d just had a world of trouble dumped in her lap along with her dreams, but she was too exhausted to sort it all out right now.

Piper turned her back on the window and sank into the couch. Anna had put the half-eaten apple back in the bowl and was sitting at the table, sleeve rolled up, tracing the lines of the dragonfly tattoo. “You’d better
keep that hidden,” Piper said. “It came in handy today, but we don’t want to attract too much attention.”

“I didn’t know I had this,” Anna said. Fear quavered in her voice. “There are too many blank pages. Nothing’s comprehensive. Why are there so many blank spots, Piper? I heard the name Aron once when I was asleep, but I don’t know his face, so the picture’s unfinished. But I
should
know his face because you say he put this picture on me.” Tears ran down the girl’s cheeks. “It doesn’t make sense! I know you told me not to say that, but it’s true. None of this feels real.”

“Hey, take it easy.” Piper went over to the table and took Anna by the shoulders. She steered her across the cabin, over to the lower berth, and sat next to her. “You knew you needed to go to the capital, didn’t you? You told those security men exactly what you wanted.”

Anna nodded slowly. “It feels like the right place,” she agreed, but she still looked miserable. “I just don’t know why.”

“Well, it’s a start,” Piper said. “Look, what you need is sleep. We’ve both been through a lot today. Tomorrow, we’ll work on your memory.”

Anna reached across the bed and slid her cold hand into Piper’s. “I’m glad you’re my protector,” she said. “You’re fierce like a mother goshawk.”

Piper laughed self-consciously. She didn’t know what to make of that compliment. “Sure, sure, that’s what they
all say,” she joked, but Anna didn’t seem to hear her. The girl’s eyelids drooped; she was already half asleep. Piper moved aside so Anna could lie down. Seeing her stretched out like that, Piper realized for the first time how dirty they both were. The hem of Anna’s dress was torn in several places, the skirt covered in mud. Piper’s coat sleeve was torn all the way to the elbow, and the knees of her pants were muddy and ripped.

“Maybe we should wash off some of this muck before we go to sleep,” she said, but Anna didn’t answer. She was asleep. Piper sighed and covered her with the blanket folded at the end of the bed. The dress was a loss. She would have to find Anna something else to wear. Maybe there were merchants on the train. She figured she could trade the medicine packs for clothing. “Now I’m a nursemaid,” she grumbled. “Micah would laugh if he could see me.” But saying Micah’s name out loud made his absence hurt even more.

Piper got up and wandered back over to the table, took an orange from the bowl, and forced herself to eat a few pieces. As soon as the tart juice hit her tongue, she realized just how hungry she was. She finished the orange, ate an apple and a bunch of grapes, and tried to think of the last time she’d had fresh fruit.
Wild blackberries, that was it
, she remembered. Her father used to find patches when he was out hunting, but even those were rare. As far as Piper was concerned, the fruit was
a feast, all the different flavors converging. She savored each bite.

When she’d finished eating, she stripped off her coat and slipped out of her muddied pants. Wearing only a shirt and her underthings, she climbed into the upper berth and closed the curtains. On the other side of the bed was another, smaller window. Piper propped up her pillow and lay on her side to look out into the darkness. They were still in sight of the mountains, heading south. Noveen was on the coast, a long way away. Piper had never seen the ocean. She drifted off to sleep imagining what it might be like, one big mass of blue, a saltwater bath. Did blackberries grow in the south? she wondered.

“You should be worried,” Gee said.

Jeyne Steel wiped her hands on her pants, turned from the coal bunker, and regarded her security chief. Gee was tall but scrawny. It was hard to believe he could move half a ton of coal all by himself and hardly break a sweat. “Green-Eye, are you
still
talking about those two? Please tell me that it’s two different passengers you’re worried about now, because you’re coming dangerously close to wasting my time.”

Gee’s cheeks flushed. “They’re not passengers, they’re stowaways, and I’m telling you, they’ve got trouble written all over them.”

“Well, they did manage to get past you,” Jeyne said,
scowling. “Speaking of which, what happened to the defenses back there?”

“The flamethrowers didn’t fire, and something killed the alarm,” Gee said angrily. “Ask your fireman what went wrong.”

“Is he still talking about this?” Trimble looked up from the firebox and grinned at Gee. Flames burned hot at Trimble’s back, but he ignored them. Jeyne often said that between the fireman who was immune to fire and Gee the chamelin, her crew would fit just as comfortably in the capital circus as on the 401.

“What happened to the third-tier defenses?” Gee demanded. “Those girls should never have gotten as far onto the train as they did.”

“I checked them over twice,” Trimble said. “Nothing’s wrong. In fact, everything’s working great back there now. Must have just been a misfire.”

“Check them again when you’re finished up here,” Jeyne told him. “No more misfires on this trip. And you,” she said, before Gee could open his mouth again, “I don’t want to hear any more about this. If trouble from two little girls is all I have to worry about, I’ll kiss the goddess’s feet—figuratively speaking.” She mopped sweat off her brow with a handkerchief and then used the cloth to tie back her thin gray hair. “The only thing you should be thinking about right now is getting this train and its cargo through Cutting Gap,” she told Gee. “No distractions.”

“I’ll be ready,” Gee said, but his green eyes were yellow around the pupils. The color change always gave away his anger.

“Good. Now get out of here,” Jeyne said. “I’m tired of looking at both of you.”

“Hey, what’d I do?” Trimble said. His black hair stood up in sweaty spikes all over his head. He pulled his goggles over his eyes and ducked his head back in the firebox.

Gee went to the window opposite the engineer’s seat and climbed out of the engine cab. He crawled up to the roof and stripped off his overalls and shirt, tossing them back through the window before he changed form. The eyes were the first to shift, the pupils turning a lambent greenish yellow and immediately adjusting to the darkness. His feet and hands widened and extended into claws, which made little shrieks as they ground against the cab’s metal roof. His body thickened and sprouted a wiry coat of green hair; his skin darkened to match. Bone spurs burst from his spine, and his face hardened, taking on an angular, lizard-like appearance. Finally, he crouched down and braced himself, and in a spasm of pain, wings burst from his back, stretching to a span of over twelve feet.