Certain that this had to count as an extenuating circumstance, I unleashed radiance toward the woman who had tried to kill me. She turned in time to watch the blue-white light carve through the air like a bolt of lightning.
It didn’t hit her.
I fell to my knees, woozy from releasing that much radiance. My ears were ringing, and every breath made an awful whistling sound as my throat swelled, constricting my airway. I didn’t understand what had happened. How could I have missed?
And then I saw what the bolt had struck—a huge tree branch had fallen between me and the thieves. It burned, flames quickly spreading along the thin, dead branches and dry leaves. Through the flames and smoke, I saw the train robbers running toward their wagon and waiting horses.
Only the boy hesitated, his silhouette very still. He was watching me. It was the last thing I saw before my cheek struck the metal grating and darkness swallowed me whole.
CHAPTER THREE
“Apprentice Haven,” someone asked in a worried voice. Clammy hands patted my cheeks.
I woke with a growl, unused to being touched. Fire circled my throat, and even before I worked my gummy eyes open, I knew I wanted whoever was close by to get away from me.
A girl hovered at my side, her eyes dark brown and shining in the lamplight like jewels. She held a wet compress tentatively. “I—I’m sorry. Can I apply this to your neck? It’ll help with the swelling.”
We were in the train’s cramped infirmary, recognizable by shelves of bottles and boxes strapped down with canvas. The girl wore the striped uniform of an apprentice healer. Her eager, gentle expression warmed me, and I regretted growling at her. We were alike in our status—both in a position to prove ourselves or be deemed unworthy.
“Yes, please,” I said, shocked at the hoarse, broken sound of my voice.
“You’re lucky we found you. You could have tumbled between the cars when the train started.”
The train was running again, the rumbling sway comforting. “Are we nearly to Frostbrook?”
“We’ll arrive any moment.”
“Did they find the people who robbed the train?”
The young healer frowned while she folded the cold muslin over my throat. “No. They got away with supplies for the new Mission. But the engineer credits you with driving them off. How did you start a fire like that?”
Silence stretched. In the moment, I hadn’t hesitated to fight with my radiance, but now that I didn’t have rage beating through my veins, it was much clearer that I’d broken House rules before even arriving at my post. “My head feels terribly foggy. I’m afraid I can’t recall,” I lied, feeling foolish.
“Of course, Apprentice. You were nearly killed! You rest your voice. The steward will bring your bag to the platform.”
I wasn’t entirely lying. My head did feel like I’d removed my brain and replaced it with mud. I closed my eyes against the lamplight and let the cold cloth soothe the pain in my throat. Sleep did not come back to me, despite the healer’s quiet humming and the calming motion of the train. Instead, I saw the shadows again, thieves taking what was rightfully mine. Or at least adjacent to being mine. If construction didn’t finish on time, it would be years before I got a chance to do anything but work on old mills and waterwheels.
Not only would that fail to qualify me to finish my apprenticeship, it would be dreadfully boring. In Sterling City, I’d already attached radiance lines to factories, scaling scaffoldings while onlookers placed bets on whether I’d tumble to my death. I’d worked alongside a Senior who engineered a grid system to channel radiance throughout a textile mill and power everything from its cooling system to the belt that carried bolts of fabric across a clever bridge from one building to the next. I could wire—and even power—industrial machinery in my sleep.
“Your head must hurt terribly,” the healer murmured, placing another wet cloth across my brow.
I was scowling. Professor Dunn had once told me it was my default expression, a wry grin on her weathered face. But smiling had gotten me nothing. Not for six years in the foundling home, when people scooped up fat infants and ignored skinny redheads covered in bruises. I’d stopped smiling at the couples who toured twice a month. And when Master Hayes approached my pallet bed, I lifted my chin in a challenge, daring him to give me false hope.
“That’s good.” He laughed. I didn’t like the sound. “Anger suits you.”
Of course, at the time I only understood that an adult was laughing at me the way the other children did, those who called me a witch for the bloodred color of my hair. I balled up my fists, ready to strike the old man the way I struck the children who laughed too close to me. His strong wrinkled fingers circled my wrist and pulled me to stand, and before I knew it, I was in a carriage as black and as sleek as a crow’s feathers.
Up until then, my only time traveling had been at three, when someone had pulled me from my mother’s rotting arms and placed me in the back of a wagon full of children holding crying babes, then driven the lot of us to the foundling home. I had only enough sense to tell them my first name. They assigned me a last name indicating that I’d been discovered in the township of Haven.
On my journey from the foundling home to Sterling City, Master Hayes wordlessly opened a book and began scrawling numbers in it. I knew I’d go mad if I didn’t fill the silence in the carriage. So, instead of speaking to him, I spoke to the woman beside him, who had introduced herself and told me that she’d be my teacher when I was older. I told Professor Dunn everything I knew about the foundling home—which children were terribly mean, which knew well enough to ignore me, how the other children were sick more often than not, which cooks could be trusted to sneak you extra bread if you helped them scour pots, and how the boiler room was my sanctuary. Her demeanor changed, then. At her barest encouragement, I explained how I’d been chastisedfor lying after I’d told the groundskeeper that the dumbwaiter didn’t need steam from the boiler to power it. That I could make it move all on my own.
“Does anyone know you were telling the truth?” she asked, leaning across the small space between us as I recoiled, too startled to mask my surprise.
“I’m only telling a story,” I tried to lie, tripping on the words.
She laughed again, her voice big and musical. Even Master Hayes, his milky eyes bright beneath his wrinkles, let out a huff of amusement. For the first time in my life, I knew they weren’t laughing at me, but at everyone who didn’t know our secret.
They took me directly to the House of Industry, where the servants cut my tangled hair and stripped me down and scrubbed me clean. Dressed in a simple black shift, I stood before a man who introduced himself only as the Indicator. I’d never seen anyone so old. He made me open my mouth, and he prodded my belly, and then he took my hands and squeezed them until my bones ached and I screamed.
