Winter (The Manhattan Exiles) (12 page)

“
Nay,” she said. “I fear it’s helping very little. You look like a five day corpse.”

“
Don’t be unkind. Not all of us can heal overnight. Lucky for me, Lolo likes to knit in his spare time.” Winter plucked a stripy woolen cap from the pocket of his coat and pulled it down over his ears. “Ready, children?”

“
I’m not a child,” Aine snapped, although she knew very well it was the response he’d hoped for.

“
Show me,” Winter challenged, and parted the curtains.

They walked through the tunnels in silence, careful to avoid the gleaming tracks. Richard had found his boots and his walking stick. He carried a black sack over one shoulder. He’d taken the watch from around his neck, and held it in the palm of one hand.

He appeared to be counting quietly to himself.

“This would be easier with Lolo,” complained Winter. He walked behind Aine, close as a shepherd with a prize lamb. She wondered if he really thought she would be so careless as to stumble onto the iron road.

“
I should have sent Gabby alone. She’d manage. She manages everything.”

“
Have you heard from them?” Richard asked, eyes on his time piece.

“
No. I’m afraid to open a Way.” Winter sounded irritated. “I’m afraid to do anything. I daren’t so much as Gather starlight to shine on your watch.”

“
I don’t need it.” Richard paused. “Did you try texting again?”

“
What am I, human?” Winter placed gentle fingers on Aine’s shoulder, restraining as Richard slowed. “I hate texting. And service is terrible thirty feet below ground. Now?”

“
Now,” confirmed Richard, and spread himself against the tunnel wall. Winter did the same, pulling Aine against his side. “Five . . .”

“
Close your eyes if you like,” the grey-eyed boy said. “But don’t turn away. Never let your nightmares see you flinch.”

“
Four,” said Richard.

“
Won’t it see
us
?” Aine wanted to close her eyes as he suggested. She wanted, in fact, to hide her face in the curve of Winter’s neck, and plug her ears with her knuckles.

“
It’s only a vehicle, Aine. Not a living thing.”

“
Three,” counted Richard.

Aine could hear it now, the growing rumble and hiss.

Not a living thing, she told herself, a vehicle. Like a horse carriage or the Queen’s Progress.

“
Two.”

Now she could feel the train, in the wall against her back and in the ground beneath her feet. The earth trembled and shook and groaned as the iron snake pierced its center.
Blue light turned the dim tunnel stark.

“
One,” Richard and Winter said together, and the train began to scream past.

Aine kept her eyes open, though the wind stung terribly. She would not show her terror to mocking Winter, or to kind Richard, or to the train itself.

She bit her tongue, and lifted her face, and tried to know her enemy.

The train was as much like a snake as she had first believed. Tall as two men but narrow, broken into segments that
rocked and rattled on the track. Its spotted skin gleamed silver and dusky white.

Two segments shot by before she realized that the mottles were in fact windows. Blurred images raced by, muddled beyond the glass. People, she thought. Passengers inside the shell.

Once, she was sure, a bearded man looked right through the window at her. Half a breath, less than half, and he was gone, whisked away down the tunnel.

The train vanished as quickly as it appeared, trailed by a fading rumble.

Aine wiped her wet eyes with her free hand. The fingers of her other were trapped in Winter’s fist, squeezed tight.

“
That’s that,” Richard said on a long exhale. “We’ve a good ten minutes, now. But hurry, anyway. I’d hate to be surprised.”

“
Lolo’s never surprised,” Winter grumbled.

“
You’re hurting me,” complained Aine. She took her throbbing fingers back.

“
Sorry.” He wouldn’t look at her. “I didn’t know what you’d do. Did it work, then?”

Richard was moving again. Aine followed carefully after.
“Work?”

“
The
draíochta
. You didn’t fall in a heap or stain my shoes. How do you feel?”

Startled, Aine looked around. She’d forgotten the draught. But Winter was right. She’d felt fear, certainly, mayhap even panic. But nothing of iron sickness.

“I feel well,” she replied carefully. “Perfectly well. But I was not standing within the thing, surrounded.”

“
Little difference. You were close enough to buss the caboose, if you so wished.”

“
Mayhap,” admitted Aine.

“
You may thank me now, or later,” Winter said.

Then the tunnel widened and grew taller, and they stepped out of the passage and into a station.

There were people waiting on the station platform. They stood alone or in small groups, looking out over the tracks or up at the tunnel ceiling or down at the floor. Most seemed impatient, a few appeared weary, and no one at all reacted when Richard walked out of the tunnel and hauled himself over the lip of the platform, walking stick rattling on tile as he climbed back upright.

Aine stood still, baffled. Certainly most of what she knew about humankind was the product of legend and oral tradition. It wasn’t impossible that travelers entered and exited the train tunnels on a regular basis, despite the obvious danger.

But Richard’s appearance elicited absolutely no reaction at all. No one reached a hand down to help him out of the ditch and onto the platform. No one moved aside to give him room. Not one person so much as glanced in his direction.

Even when she saw, quite clearly, that he accidentally put his hand on an elderly woman’s sandaled foot as he lifted himself onto the platform. The woman muttered and shifted, but paid Richard no attention.

They didn’t see him, Aine realized. The people on the platform didn’t see Richard at all.

“Is it a Glamour?” Aine asked. “Can they see
us
?”

“
No and no.” Winter stood against the platform wall. He cupped his fingers. “Give me your foot. I’ll toss you up. Try not to land in anyone’s lap. Richard’s good but he’s not a miracle worker. Come on,” he added when Aine hesitated, “our train will be here sooner rather than later.”

Aine put one foot into his cupped hands. Winter sent her deftly up and over the edge. She managed to land on her own two feet without making any disturbance.

“Like a cat,” Richard said in tones of admiration. “Wish I could do that.”

“
The fay have a distinct advantage over humans,” Winter said, scrambling out of the ditch.

“
Bird bones?” asked Richard, leaning on his stick.

“
No fast food chains on the other side,” Winter returned. “Did you know all that grease sits in one’s gut for years and years? I don’t know why every one of you shouldn’t weigh three hundred pounds.” He dusted off his trousers, and readjusted his cap.

“
You eat far more of the stuff than I,” Richard pointed out, eyes on the far tunnel. “I don’t believe humans drove your ancestors out at all. I think they all died of clogged arteries and liver failure.”

Aine watched the mortals on the platform, absorbing their scents, colors, and sounds. She tried to beat back disgust. She had to remind herself that they were
usually harmless, even in groups.

“
We’re really not so different, are we?” Richard said. “Your people and mine?”

She looked into his long, gentle face. Perhaps he was right. Already she had almost forgotten that he was mortal.
“They can’t hear us, either?”

“
They can’t hear us,” confirmed Winter. “You might say Richard has a knack.”

“
A talent,” said Aine, remembering. “Richard said you surround yourself with talented people.”

Richard tapped his stick, glancing away. The grey-eyed boy met Aine’s stare.

“You could say that. I prefer to think of it as sheltering the wounded. Oh, look,” he added with false cheer. “Here comes the Blue Line.”

The train screeched to a halt alongside the platform, and on each of its five segments narrow doors hissed open. Mortals stepped out and mortals stepped in, jostling for position, as unaware of each other as leaves on a swollen brook.

“
After Richard,” said Winter. “He’ll find us a place, his stick’s useful that way. I’m right behind you.”

Richard pushed forward through the crowd. Aine took a deep breath and followed. Her foot touched the train floor, and she hesitated, expecting to bend beneath a blast of pain or a stab of nausea, but she felt only the gnawing grip of excitement.

“Are you sure it’s not alive? I can feel it humming.”

“
That’s the motor,” Richard replied. Winter was right, he used the stick to his advantage, tapping shins and rapping toes, parting the crowd efficiently. “Haven’t you motors in fairyland? They’re amazing things, motors.”

“
Nay, no motors.”

A women with a squalling baby jostled Aine. Aine jostled back. Winter snickered.

“I’ll show you one, when we’re home,” said Richard. “I have several in my workshop.”

He stopped. Around his shoulder Aine could see that they’d reached the end of their particular segment. There was no place further to go.

People slouched on worn brown seats anchored to the train’s shell. Those without a place to sit hung onto the poles running from floor to ceiling. More mortals pushed in from behind, squishing into every free space.

The train lurched and began to move.

Aine fought the urge to gasp at stale air.

“
Richard,” Winter said. “Clear a space for our princess, will you? She’s looking just a little green around the gills.”

“
I’m fine,” protested Aine, but Richard had already turned, and was surveying the nearest crowd.

His critical eye settled on a young man sporting sharp, greasy hair and baggy trousers. Quick as a viper Richard’s stick shot out. He smacked the man lightly but firmly on the crown of the head.

“Richard -”

“
Shush,” cautioned Winter.

The young man jerked. His hand went to his head. He frowned, and stared from left to right. The humans to either side paid him no attention.

Richard tapped the man once again.

“
Move,” he said. “Make room.”

The greasy-haired man looked straight through Richard, eyes wide and frightened. He grabbed his coat and bag, and stood up. As he staggered past Aine she thought she saw a purpling bruise on his brow.

“That was unkind,” she said.

“
But useful,” Richard countered. “Sit down.”

She wanted to argue, but the train was moving quickly, rocking side to side, and she couldn’t steady her legs. She edged over to the empty seat and sat carefully. No one glanced her way.

Winter and Richard shuffled so they stood nearly in her lap.

“
Look,” Winter pointed. “Out the window. Richard and I like to play count the sewer rats.”

“
Gabby doesn’t approve,” Richard returned, smiling.

Aine leaned forward. She stared out the dirty window.
“It’s moving too quickly. Nobody could count anything, let alone vermin.”

“
Faster than anything moves in Court, I imagine.”

“
You imagine wrong,” Aine told Winter. “Your iron snakes are slugs compared to the Progress.”

“
The Progress?” asked Richard. He looked at Winter, who shrugged.

“
Aye,” said Aine. Outside the train window the tunnel lights flashed and faded. Truly the train moved like a beast through the rock, fighting for every inch of track.

She couldn’t help marveling, just a little, at the humans who had conceived of and then cut the passages through the earth.

“What’s a Progress?” Richard pressed. “Does it have wheels? How fast does it go?”

“
It hasn’t any wheels,” replied Aine, still gazing out the window. “It doesn’t need them. It moves at the Queen’s whim, sometimes faster than a handmaiden’s daughter’s thoughts.” She turned from the window, and looked at Richard. “That is, so long as we keep it fed, of course. It’s always eating, the Progress is.”

Richard blinked. Winter was expressionless. The woman sitting in the chair next to Aine belched and sighed. Overhead, on a crooked sign fastened to the ceiling of the train, numbers and letter flashed, bright as stars.