He reached for the lock that kept the cargo door secured in place. It took a couple of tries for him to slide the key into the lock and turn it. From there it was a matter of twisting the handle and sliding the bar upward. Blaine pocketed the key before shifting position to stretch his leg out and get his foot against the edge of the door. With a grunt, he shoved it open a little, the metal screeching against the grooves.
A pair of hands appeared from within the cargo carriage, hauling the door open partway. A young man peered cautiously out, face lit from the glow of a lantern inside. “I suppose you’re our pickup?”
“You’d suppose right,” Blaine yelled to be heard over the sound of the train and the wind. “I’ll need your code phrase.”
The young man rattled off a rhyming phrase that matched what the duchess had given Blaine. The quote from a children’s book was an odd choice.
Dureau is right. Lore picks out terrible code words.
Blaine rattled off his own response to the code phrase, and the young man’s expression became one of relief. Blaine let go of the ladder with one hand to point at the airship still easily keeping pace with the train. “We’ll get you on board.”
Even as he spoke, the soldiers on the roof were already signaling the airship crew. Blaine clung to the ladder, watching as a soldier grabbed a line, attached it to a clip on his belt, then rappelled over the side of the cargo carriage. He swung into the cargo space with practiced ease, landing in a crouch.
It was a matter of moments for the soldier to secure the young man to the line with an extra belt harness. Then the soldier threw them out of the train, swinging in the open air, before someone on the airship started winching them up at a rapid pace.
The woman left behind in the cargo space crept to the side of the open door nearest Blaine. She set down the lantern before sliding a leather travel tube off her shoulder. Then she braced herself against the side of the train and extended her arm to offer him the traveling case.
“He made these copies, but the Marshal didn’t want them left in Helia,” she shouted over the clacking of the train wheels.
Blaine reached for the leather tube. His fingers had barely curled over the shoulder strap when a burst of gunfire cut through the air. The woman jerked, eyes going wide as flecks of something dark and wet splattered against the underside of her jaw and over her throat. She swayed for a moment, hand dropping from the tube, before she crumpled in a slow fall that sent her pitching sideways off the train.
In the weak glow of the lantern, Blaine saw her body get caught by the train wheels and dragged beneath them, tearing to pieces as they moved down the tracks.
He jerked his gaze away from the cog’s bloody remnants and found himself staring down the barrel of a Zip gun attached to a spider automaton clinging to the side of the cargo carriage.
“Tristan!” the magician yelled.
He didn’t hear the Zip gun go off, but he heard the impact of the bullets crashing against an aether shield that solidified between him and the unexpected threat in the shape of connecting trapezoids. The magician jerked her wand toward the automaton, dragging the shield with her, and smashed it into the machine.
The force of the blow dislodged the automaton. It fell to the ground, one of its mechanical legs getting caught in the train’s wheels and dragged beneath them. Loud popping sounds came from the tracks as some of the bullets in its internal magazine careened through the air and impacted the train.
Blaine slung the leather tube over one shoulder before scrambling up the ladder, nearly losing his footing near the top as he flung himself back onto the roof. He activated the magnets on his gloves to keep himself from sliding off, watching as the magician hurled a fiery ball of aether from the tip of her wand at a second Zip gun wielded by a spider automaton crawling up from the end of the cargo carriage. Her attack knocked it off, but more were appearing.
“Where did they come from?” a soldier asked.
“Who cares? We need to get off the train!” someone else shouted back.
“I’m betting debt collectors have control of them,” the magician said grimly.
The thought made Blaine’s stomach twist. “If they knew the package was on the train, then that means the chain might be compromised.”
It was a terrifying thought, because if they lost the Marshal, they would lose too much of the ground the Clockwork Brigade had fought to keep in Daijal.
The magician flung another spell at yet more automatons, her magic the only thing standing between them and getting turned into pincushions. Some of the automatons took aim at their transport instead. Blaine looked up in fear as bullets pinged off the underside of the thin metal plating that curved beneath the balloon. The modification was one Blaine had overseen, an addition found on E’ridian airships more than Ashionen ones.
The soldiers left on the train roof sought to make themselves as small a target as possible behind the magician’s trapezoid shield. Wind slammed against them as the airship readjusted position in the air, Honovi keeping it stable and flying apace. Blaine watched as a couple more automatons took aim at the airship—so the magician took aim at them.
She cast a spell that sent bullets of magic cutting through the air and through her shield, finding a home in the automatons. Magic crackled around the machines as they shuddered and wound down, the motion of the train forcing the ones that had been hit to go sliding off the roof. She snapped her wrist, sending another wave of aether-shaped magic bullets toward the remaining automatons.
“I’ll hold them off! Get everyone back on the airship!” the magician shouted.
Someone signaled the airship with a handheld gaslight, and more ropes were thrown overboard. The soldiers wasted no time hooking themselves to the ropes and getting winched back up. But even with the magician’s shield, the soldiers in the air were targets. One cried out, going limp on his line but not falling due to being clipped in. He was hauled up as literal dead weight along with the rest of the soldiers, before two more lines were tossed overboard.
Blaine caught one, staying balanced on his knees with one gloved hand magnetized to the train roof. The travel tube slung across his back bumped against his head as he turned to look at the magician.
“Come on!” Blaine yelled. “It’s our turn!”
The magician slid her way toward him in an ungainly sprawl, wand still in hand. As she drew closer, Blaine realized that the clarion crystal embedded in the tip of her wand wasn’t glowing. She wasn’t channeling her magic through the wand but through herself.
