Of Dreams and Rust (6 page)

He is chatting with passersby, though his attention keeps drifting toward the pink-light salon just across the street.

They are doing a bustling business tonight. Opium fumes drift from the salon's open windows, and musicians entertain the drunken patrons as they wait outside.

I hover in the shadow of the gate, waiting for my moment. The guard is not entirely distracted. Despite his friendly smile and wandering eye, his posture is tense. I am sure he is counting down the minutes until he locks us all in. I peer through the fence at the citizens, awaiting the right group for my purposes. A shiver passes through me as the guard checks his pocket watch once more. But then I see my opportunity—a group of girls about my age, all wearing overcoats with hoods and giggling as they head toward the Hill, where the middle-class families live. They look finer than I do. The hems of their dresses aren't frayed, and their coats are not threadbare like mine. I edge toward the gateway, feverishly hoping the guard won't notice such details.

Right as the girls pass, I take a sudden side step and tuck myself in behind them. The guard senses movement and turns to look, but I am wearing my hood and am indistinguishable from the others as we pass him. Nearly faint with relief, I break free of Gochan Two. I am on my way.

No one pays me any mind as I walk past the quiet hulk of Gochan Three, the textile mill and clothing factory. I turn right when I reach the corner, leaving the Ring behind and heading for the train station. I am not the only one. To my surprise, the platform is crowded: men in bulky gray overcoats with their hats pulled low over their ears and their breaths puffing out like smoke from between their lips, a few grandmas in heavy shawls, a few families with small children in tow, and a few young women looking chilled and pinched in the night air. I find it oddly comforting. I look just like them in my brown work dress and plain wool overcoat.

The old man in the ticket booth frowns at me when I ask for passage to Kegu. “Why you going all the way there?” he barks. “Don't you know it's overrun with rebel dogs? No one's going that far, my girl. Farthest anyone else is going is Vuda, before the crossover into Yilat.”

My fingers clamp hard over the straps of my satchel. “Yes, sir, but my family needs me.”

He squints at me through smudged glasses. “You should stay in the Ring. Dangerous time, this is.”

I pluck my coins from my bag and slide them beneath the glass partition, including an extra bronze penny to grease the gears in this transaction. “My mother is ill,” I say. “She has a cancer, and I'm afraid she doesn't have much longer on this earth.”

“Oh.” He blinks down at the extra coin, then slides it back over to me. “All the best to you, then,” he says, his voice suddenly hoarse. “Family's important.”

I mumble my thanks and take back the tiny bribe that he rejected, embarrassed that I insulted him by offering it in the first place. Ticket in hand, I join the people on the platform, standing near a clump of old ladies and tucking my hands into the pockets of my overcoat, wishing I owned gloves.

The platform is abuzz with gossip, mostly about the barbaric Noor and their intentions to come to the east and kill us all. The young women discuss it in low tones, the old women more loudly. I am relieved when the steam engine finally shrieks and roars into the station, drowning out their voices. The conductor catches my arm as I head for the rear of the train. “Up front,” he says gruffly. “Women up front.”

I obey him, following the factory girls up the steel steps and into the car. I find myself a seat, a hard wooden bench, really, and stare out the window at the Ring, still within reach. I could change my mind now. I could jump off and scamper down the steps. I could sneak back into the factory and the clinic and no one would be the wiser.

But as the train jolts into motion, I realize it is too late. I have made my choice. It feels like my chest is caught in a metal press, squeezed flat under the overwhelming pressure of my sorrow and fear. I've left my father and Bo behind. I left no note, no hint of where I've run to.

They cannot reach me. They cannot help me or save me or stop me. I have done it.

I am on my own, and I need to make a plan. I have to tell someone who matters, someone who can do something with the information I possess, so my first idea is to go straight to the municipal complex in Kegu and ask to speak to whoever's in charge.

When I think through it like that, it seems so incredibly foolish. But what is the alternative? It is not as if I can trust a letter to get there, and a telegram can be intercepted too. And it is not as if I know any rebels.

Well. I might know one. But I haven't spoken to him in a year, and I have no idea where he is, no way to contact him.

“May I sit here?”

I look up to see a girl, about my age, with pink, cold-kissed cheeks and bright eyes. Her black hair is parted in the middle and braided, and her shirt and slacks tell me she probably works at Gochan Three. “Certainly,” I say, moving my satchel off the bench to make room for her.

“My name is Anji,” she says, settling onto the bench with her large cloth bag at her feet.

“Wen,” I say. “It's nice to meet you.”

“Where are you going?” she asks. “I'm headed to Vuda for the holiday. My family lives in Lavie. Easy enough to walk.”

“I'm going to Kegu,” I say. “My family is there.”

Her eyes widen. “They should be coming to you, not the other way around. It's so dangerous there!”

“My mother is ill. She cannot travel.” Lying is becoming second nature, it seems, because my voice does not even shake.

“But you are all alone? How can your family allow you to do such a thing?” Anji looks horrified, and it makes my heart thump.

“I suppose the news out of Kegu has been rather alarming.”

She lets out a laugh. “I hope your father or brothers are meeting you at the station. Otherwise, you could be plucked right off the street. I heard there are roaming bands of rebels just looking for young girls to kidnap.”

I suspect some of those stories are not quite true. I grew up on tales of the savage Noor, and then I met some of those men, who turned out to be just that—men. But I am not about to have that argument with Anji. “Oh, of course. My brothers will be waiting for me.”

Anji relaxes and leaves me to my thoughts for a long while. The train chugs upward, along a high pass that will carry us west. Above us loom the northern peaks of the Western Hills, and to our south is the canyon that winds through them, a split in the land through which men and machines can walk to get from the Ring directly to the border villages of the Yilat Province. The train tracks stick to the northern foothills, and to my right, down the rocky slope, stretches the grasslands.

I have never been this far north and west before. My nose skims the window glass as I squint in the early dawn. Most women in the car with me are napping fitfully, their heads resting on their shawls and cloth bags, but I am wide awake as the sun rises slowly behind us, lighting the way. My throat aches as the golden light glints off a bend in the track. My father will be waking now, and will probably assume I am with Bo, since I start most mornings in his underground kingdom. And Bo will be awake too, wondering when my footsteps will echo through the tunnel.

I push them out of my thoughts as my eyes begin to burn. I think of what I have to say to the rebels. They need to prepare for those war machines to stride through the canyon, before they spill into Yilat and destroy everything in their path. Lost in those fears and my own memories, I drift through the next few hours.

The train is just pulling out of Ganluo, merely a depot in a small hillside village, when Anji pokes me in the shoulder. “Vuda is the next stop, but it's almost an hour away still. Are you hungry? Will you come to the dining car with me?”

My stomach growls in response. “Let's go.”

We sway down the aisle, rocked by the train as it rounds a curve and heads higher into the hills. There's a sudden jolt, and I nearly topple into an elderly woman. Her knitting needles stab into my side. I apologize and keep walking, rubbing the sore spot over my ribs. When we get to the space between the cars, the conductor frowns. “The men are having their breakfast,” he says.

“Well, we're hungry too,” says Anji, putting her hands on her hips, “and our money is as good as theirs.”

The sliding door to the dining car clatters and shrieks as it opens. A young man with his cap tilted cheekily to one side grins at us. “You are welcome here, ladies.” When he sees the look on the conductor's face, he slaps the man on the shoulder. “We'll be on our best behavior, but you can't blame us for wanting to bide time with pretty girls, can you?”

The conductor, staring at the fellow's off-kilter cap with sharp disapproval, says, “I'm responsible for their safe passage.”

The grin slides off the young man's face. “Then I accept the responsibility as my own. I promise you, no one will lay a finger on them.” He looks as if he could make sure of it—his shoulder muscles are straining at the fabric of his coat. He is quite bulky, and as I look into the dining car at the young men lounging on the benches, dining on dumplings and sipping on tea, I realize all of them are.

The young man turns his gaze on me. “I'm Leye,” he says, bowing.

Anji and I curtsy and introduce ourselves. Leye offers his hand and helps us step over the coupling and into the dining car, where every head turns as we enter. I am so used to viewing myself in the reflection of Bo's metal face that I wonder what exactly these boys are seeing. Because they are boys, really, or little more than that. They can't be but a few years older than I am, and they are all clean shaven and raw looking. “Where are all of you going?” I ask.

“Oh, Vuda. There is a new mill there that needs workers.”

Anji rakes her gaze over them. “There is work in the Ring.”

Leye's cheeks turn ruddy. “Ah, there is better pay in Vuda, or so I hear.”

“But haven't you already been hired?” I ask. “You're all wearing the same clothing.”

Leye clears his throat as he glances at the other boys, all clad in gray trousers, black boots, thick gray overcoats buttoned up, bulky over the layers underneath. It is as if they are wearing their entire wardrobes on their backs. The smell of sweat is heavy and musky. “Yes. Yes, we all have jobs waiting for us.”

Anji arches her eyebrow. “Nice of them to send you work clothes.”

Leye gives her a charming smile. “And a bit of advance pay. May I buy you a bun?”

I move up the aisle ahead of them and ask the attendant for some tea, inhaling its astringent fumes gratefully. A young man who introduces himself as Musa moves over and offers me a seat, and I take it as Anji and Leye order their food.

“Do you have family in Vuda?” Musa asks before blowing steam off his dumpling.

“Oh, she's not getting off in Vuda. She's going all the way to Kegu,” says Anji, bumping her hip against mine as she sits down with a sweet bun.

Musa turns to me, his broad back against the window of the car. He is a handsome boy, the kind my friend Vie would fawn over, with smooth skin and high cheekbones. “You cannot do that.”

“My mother is sick. I must.”

But Musa shakes his head. “Absolutely not.”

“I'm sorry,” I say, smiling at his concern, “but I think I am old enough to decide.”

Musa angrily beckons to Leye. “Did you know there are people on this train headed to Kegu?”

Leye frowns, an expression that looks odd on his face, which seems made for smiling. He rubs at the back of his neck. “Miss Wen, we strongly advise you to get off in Vuda.”

“Why, so you can take her for a walk, maybe buy her a drink?” says Anji, tart as a lemon.

“No,” says Leye, all serious now. His black brows knit in concern. “So you will not die.”

“I've heard the warnings,” I say, “and I understand it is dangerous. But I suspect they are exaggerated.”

Musa chuckles. “Maybe they are. That's not why we're concerned.”

Leye's hand drops from his neck as he exchanges a hard gaze with Musa, who nods. Both boys reach up and unbutton the top few buttons of their coats, revealing the insignia of the national army. “We are not going to Vuda,” Musa says quietly, leaning so close that I smell the garlic and pork on his breath, that I see the faint red rash on his jaw where he shaved a bit too zealously. “We're going to Kegu. All of us. And we're going to take back the capital.”

“Oh my,” says Anji, looking them over as my heart flutters painfully. “So you are soldiers.”

Leye nods. “The rebels won't expect us to come this way.” He lifts his coat, and I see why he looks so bulky. His rifle and knife are strapped to his body. “The conductor knows. There are two trains behind us as well.”

“And we are cover for you,” I say quietly. “Because this is a civilian train.”

Musa has the good grace to look ashamed. “You are in no danger now. Especially if you get off in Vuda.”

I look over his shoulder at the craggy mountainside hanging above us. We are headed into a pass carved between two high hills. “How far is it now?” My mind is spinning. Judging by what the ticket seller said, I am the only person apart from these soldiers who is going to Kegu, and now these boys know that. Can I make it to the capital and slip away to warn the rebels? Will I have to get off in Vuda and figure out how to travel the rest of the way? Will there be any other civilian trains, or has the military commandeered the rail line?

“We're nearly at the peak of our journey,” Leye tells me, and from the way Musa rolls his eyes, I can tell this is something Leye is particularly interested in. “We are a mile from the highest altitude we will reach, and after that we'll descend into the valley where Vuda lies. As the crow flies, we are not far from Yilat. Maybe thirty miles or so—if you want to trek over the high passes or descend to walk through the long canyon. But by train, once we leave Vuda, we skirt the mountains and enter Yilat from the northeast.” He touches my shoulder and winks. “Without civilians.”