The Mark of the Dragonfly (32 page)

Be careful what you wish for
, Jeyne told herself. Retirement might come sooner than any of them expected with Doloman waiting for them in Noveen. And now they had another crisis to deal with.

Before the revelations about Anna’s identity, Jeyne had been sure Doloman wouldn’t risk coming for the girls himself, not after the disaster in Tevshal. She’d thought they would have time to hide them somewhere in Noveen and plead ignorance later when questioned by the authorities. It had been a fool’s hope. Doloman obviously knew what Anna was, and Piper was sure he would risk anything to get her back. He’d probably be waiting for them at the train station in the capital with a full contingent of guards.

It was time for a new plan, Jeyne decided. They’d have
to get the girls off the train and far away as soon as possible. Derghesh was a small farming village that supplied food to the capital. Jeyne had some friends there, folks she knew she could trust. It was far from their route, but not so far that Gee couldn’t fly them. The girls would be safe there until they could find a more permanent place for them to hide.

What a pair of strays they’d picked up. Jeyne couldn’t help smiling to herself at the thought. Hadn’t she told Gee at the beginning of this mess that if all she had to worry about on this trip was a couple of little girls, she’d thank the goddess?

“What can you possibly be happy about?” Gee stopped his prowling and was staring at Jeyne.

“I was just thinking that in all my years on the railroad, I’ve never encountered anything quite like those girls,” Jeyne said, then added, “Well, maybe one other time.” She shot Gee a significant glance.

“They’re in a world of trouble,” Gee murmured. A look of misery creased his face. “Why can’t we just keep them on the 401? They could earn their keep as well as anyone else.”

“You know I can’t do that, Gee,” Jeyne said gently.

“Why not?” Gee burst out. He kicked a trash bin in frustration. The metal basket clattered across the floor. “You did the same for me once. You know I would have died if you hadn’t taken me in.”

“Never regretted it a day since,” Jeyne said, “but this is different. Doloman knows they’re here. There’s no hiding them. We have to offload them outside the capital.”

“Just like a pallet of cargo,” Gee muttered.

“Stop it,” Jeyne snapped. “We’re all tired, Green-Eye, and you’re not the only one who cares about what happens to those girls.”

“I should be able to protect them,” Gee said. “It’s what I’m supposed to do.”

“You have protected them,” Jeyne said. “And you’ll get your chance again when it really counts.”

“What do you mean?”

Jeyne looked solemn. “King Aron says the future of Solace is in machines, that we need to expand and explore our world. That little girl in there is something we’ve never seen before, something new. She may just be that future. Doloman must know it too, how valuable she is. He won’t quit until he gets her. Somehow, we’ve got to stop that from happening.”

Piper and Trimble worked long into the night. Piper glanced up once when the sun went down, and when she looked up again, gray dawn light was visible through the window. Her shoulders were stiff from hunching over the table, her injured hand ached, and her eyeballs felt like they’d been rolled in sand.

“I don’t think we can do much more,” Piper said at
last. Her throat was so dry. She desperately needed a glass of water.

“Let me stitch up the knife cut,” Trimble said. “You’ve done more than enough. You need to rest.”

He was right. Piper had been working for hours, her magic subtly taking hold and slowly helping her mend broken coils and wiring. Healing wasn’t nearly as fast and dramatic as the destruction Piper had caused when she blew up the raiders’ crossbows. She still didn’t fully understand how her magic worked, but in a way, it made sense. Destroying a machine, whether smashing it with a hammer or sending a burst of magic at it, was relatively easy. But fixing a machine was harder, requiring subtlety and her own skills as a machinist. In fact, Piper might not have noticed the healing magic at work at all had they not been working so long on so many minute details.

The inner workings of Anna’s arm were composed of a system of parts so finely integrated and in tune with each other that as soon as Piper fixed one part, another had to be seen to immediately or the whole system threatened to break down. She had worked with a few complex machines like that in the past, but nothing close to this scale before. At first, the task had seemed impossible, but gradually, as the night wore on, the work got easier. Piper’s magic combined with her own skills as a machinist created the healing process. The longer she and Trimble worked, the easier the repairs became, until Piper felt
as if the machine parts responded to her thoughts rather than her touch. She’d never experienced anything like it before. If she hadn’t been terrified of hurting Anna, Piper would have been thrilled at the challenge before her and at what she’d accomplished.

She’d helped heal Anna, and Piper knew in her heart that her magic, on its own, wouldn’t have been able to do that. She’d needed all the skill and experience with machines that she’d gained during her years in the scrap town. The magic was a part of her, but it wasn’t everything—her own talents were just as important.

The light outside had turned pink by the time Trimble finished putting the last stitch in Anna’s arm. He cleaned the area around the wound, bandaged it, and arranged Anna’s arm against her side on top of the blanket.

“Good work,” Piper said, rubbing her bleary eyes.

“Thanks, but she’s going to have a bit of a nasty scar there,” Trimble said.

“It won’t be the first,” Piper said, thinking of the scar at the back of Anna’s neck. “It doesn’t matter anyway, as long as she’s fixed.”

She was so tired. Her head throbbed, and the room looked blurry around the edges. Piper wanted to sleep, but she had to go see Jeyne and Gee first, let them know that she thought Anna was going to be all right.

Trimble put a hand on her arm as she moved unsteadily to the door. “I mean it—you need to rest. You used up a lot of energy, and it’s not something you have
an infinite supply of—magic takes its toll on us. Remember that.”

Piper nodded. Casting one more glance at Anna’s sleeping form, she left the car. As she expected, Jeyne and Gee were waiting for her in the next car, a place used as dry food storage. It was strange to see them sitting there side by side on sacks of rice, not speaking. They looked up when Piper walked through the door, worry creasing their faces.

“She’s going to be all right,” Piper said. It felt strange echoing the same statement Gee had made earlier. Of course, he must have known that Piper would be able to help Anna. He’d believed in her. “She’s asleep, but when she wakes up, her arm should be fine.”

Gee’s solemn face split into a grin, and Jeyne’s expression softened. “Good work,” she said. “Well done, both of you.”

Trimble came up behind Piper. “This one needs food and sleep,” he said firmly. “I’ll take her back to her room.”

“Wait,” Piper said. Though she wanted nothing more than to collapse in her bed and sleep for a week, she knew she couldn’t. Finding out that Anna was part machine had changed everything. “We have to talk about Anna.”

“Agreed,” Jeyne said. She and Piper ignored Trimble’s scowl. “Now we know why she’s so important to Doloman. And that gives us an advantage.”

“We can’t stay on the train or go to the capital,”
Piper said. She’d had all night to think, and the realization that both the 401 and Noveen were lost to them hurt her more than all her other injuries. “Where can we go that Doloman won’t find us?”

“Gee and I have been talking about that,” Jeyne said. “Tomorrow night, Gee’s going to fly you off the train and take you to some friends of mine. They used to be farmers before Aron strip-mined their land. They don’t have any love for the Dragonfly. You can stay with them until we figure out where to move you for good.”

Despite her worry and fear, Piper warmed when she thought about what Jeyne was willing to do for them. She’d probably been planning their escape all night. “You’ve risked so much for us already,” Piper said. “Wherever we go, we’ll have to earn our keep.” She looked at Jeyne, and her face burned with shame. She needed to tell her the truth. “I came on the 401 with Anna because I thought I could get something out of it. I thought that if I took Anna back to her family, they’d give me some kind of reward, something that would buy me a new life. I thought everything was going to be so simple. Then Anna—well, she messed it all up. The girl talks more than anyone I’ve ever met. I don’t understand her half the time, and the other half she drives me crazy. She’s so smart and determined, yet she’s fragile too.” Piper needed them to understand. “I never wanted to be a burden on you or anyone else. I was just so tired of being poor, of being nothing but a scrapper in a tiny little
town in one corner of the world. But it’s different now. I always wanted to earn my place. Now I know there’s more to it than that. I need to look out for more than just myself. I want to help you all however I can, and to help Anna. She’s like a sister to me, no matter what she’s made of.”

Jeyne nodded approvingly. “You’ve defended this train and looked out for its people more than once,” she said. “If I could give you a place here, I would, and give you both the chance to earn your keep. As it is, the least we can do is make sure you’re safe. Will you let us do that?”

Piper nodded, tears burning in her eyes. “Thank you.”

“You need to rest now.” Gee came forward and supported her as she crossed the room. Piper hadn’t realized how much strength it was taking to stay on her feet until Gee put his arm around her.
Careful
, Piper warned herself.
You might come to rely on that too much. Then when it’s gone …

She refused to consider being separated from Gee right then. It was just too painful. Maybe when she’d rested, when she could think clearly. For now, she leaned on Gee and let him lead her back to her room. She was too tired even to climb into the upper berth, so she stretched out on Anna’s bed. The last thing she remembered was Gee helping her draw up the covers, and then she was asleep.

Piper woke late in the day just long enough to fumble her way to the washroom, catch a frightening glimpse of herself in the mirror, and then stumble back to bed. She was still sore all over, but at least her head no longer ached.

When she woke again, it was dark. She’d slept the whole day away. Piper pushed her tangled hair back from her face and stared bleary-eyed at the moonlight coming in through the window. Why had no one come to wake her? Piper supposed Gee and the others were either still making repairs to the 401 after the raider attack or they were busy planning Piper and Anna’s secret escape. Probably both.

As Piper gazed out the window, she drifted between sleep and wakefulness. Worry and fear gnawed at her, fighting with the exhaustion. Would they really be able to hide from Doloman? She thought of everything they’d seen on their journey to the capital. The land around King Aron’s iron mines, stripped bare of trees and grass, and she already knew what the factory in Noveen was like. The Dragonfly was obsessed with building the best machines in all of Solace—tools that would help him explore beyond the known world. All those grand plans and accomplishments, yet Aron’s chief machinist had done him one better. In Anna, Doloman had discovered the most incredible machine of all.

But
machine
wasn’t the right word for Anna. She might have machine parts running the show under her skin, but her mind and her heart were just like any other human’s—and better than most.

Piper wouldn’t let Doloman hurt any of them. He hadn’t counted on Piper being a synergist. She would use all the magic she had in her to protect Anna, Gee, and the rest of her friends.

But she had to get her strength back first. Right now, she was too weak to protect anyone. Piper dozed and suddenly she was dreaming again, flying low over a vast blue-green ocean and then rising at dizzying speed toward a cliff. It was just like Raenoll’s vision. When she crested the top, the city of Noveen spread out before her. A layer of thick gray fog clung to the stone buildings, shredding in the ocean wind and then re-forming like angry ghosts. The source of the fog was the factory, a sprawling mass of buildings and smoke stacks that filled an entire neighborhood. From her vantage, she saw people scurrying between the buildings like insects.

Piper descended toward the factory. She didn’t want to, but a weight pulled her down, shaking her, tearing her out of the dream. The factory and the city dissolved into the anxious face of Jeyne. At first Piper didn’t recognize the woman. Her clothes were all askew, and her hair hung in tangles around her head as if someone had yanked her out of bed as roughly as she was now trying to yank Piper.

“Get up, girl! Come on, we’ve lost too much time already,” Jeyne said.

“What is it?” Piper sat up, groggy and still half held by the dream.

“It’s Anna,” Jeyne said. “She’s gone.”