“Since you took care of the fire, I need to see if anyone else survived,” Soren said.
“If any did, they die here.”
Soren stared up at him. “Why?”
Vanya managed a smile that was more grimace than anything else. “Because they all conspired to murder me.”
“I’m not killing them.”
Vanya heaved out a tired sigh. “Then I will.”
It wasn’t a warden’s place to interfere with matters of state. Wardens were neutral amidst all the politics twisting through every country on Maricol. Soren had no say in who lived and who died when royalty gave an order like that, even if his preference wasn’t murder. He was a warden, after all. Their underlying duty was to save lives in the poison fields, not take them.
Soren guided Vanya backward until he sat on the velocycle. “Stay here. I’ll scout around.”
He straightened up and hesitated a moment before unholstering one of his pistols. He pressed it into Vanya’s hand, not letting go until the prince had a good grip.
“Don’t shoot me when I return,” Soren said.
Vanya raised one eyebrow. “That would be poor repayment of what I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me anything, princeling.”
Soren left before Vanya could argue further, unholstering his other pistol. He worked his way through the smoldering wreckage one train carriage at a time, finding mostly bodies. He dragged them out one at a time, piling them on the ground with the scattered remains of the revenants. He was sweating by the time he finished, shoulders aching from hauling dead weight around.
All total, there were over forty dead to deal with, some having died from the crash, while others had died by the starfire that had enveloped the train before the engine blew. Two died of bullets fired from the pistol Soren had given Vanya, a mercy if there ever was one, because the wounds they’d sustained from the crash were a slow, agonizing way to die.
“I need to burn the bodies,” Soren said.
Vanya nodded, passing back the pistol. “Let me handle that.”
Before Soren could protest, Vanya gestured at the pile of dead. Starfire flickered at his fingertips before igniting on the corpses. The heat made Soren turn his head to the side as starfire consumed the dead with a controlled quickness. He studied Vanya’s profile, noticing the tension in the prince’s jaw, the stiff way he held himself as he concentrated on the task at hand.
He was, Soren could admit, very nice to look at.
Soren attributed that stray thought to weeks spent alone in the poison fields and let it drift away, much like the smoke rising from the massive funeral pyre. The starfire burned everything quicker than normal fire, cutting down what would’ve taken hours to perhaps thirty minutes judging by his sturdy pocket watch.
Only ash remained once Vanya let the starfire gutter out. Soren eyed the blackened ground before nodding in the direction of where his velocycle was parked. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. I’ll take you wherever you need to go.”
“Bellingham. Don’t stop anywhere else until we reach that city.”
Soren leveled him a flat look. “I’ll need to refuel at way stations along the way for a ride that long. You can deal with that, otherwise we’re walking when I run out of fuel.”
“I won’t be safe in public. Someone tried to murder me and managed to get my household to turn against me. I am without any support of the Legion or others I can trust, and have no way to contact my House.”
“You have me.”
Vanya turned his head to stare at Soren, looking more clear-eyed than he had before. The weight of his attention made Soren want to shift on his feet, but he held his ground.
“I suppose I do,” Vanya said after a moment.
Soren led the way back to his velocycle, getting seated first. The prince settled in the space behind him without complaint, body bracketing Soren’s. It couldn’t be comfortable, not with the weapons Soren carried on his person, but Vanya didn’t complain. He merely wrapped his arms around Soren’s waist and lifted his booted feet to brace them on the studs sticking away from the frame.
“Let me know if you need to stop,” Soren said as he kicked the stand up.
“I will be fine.”
Soren rolled his eyes as he started the engine. “I mean it. It’d be a waste of my effort to save you from this mess only to have you pass out and tumble off and crack your skull the rest of the way open.”
