And then I realize, in our mad dash, that the Strikers are fallingbehind. No, they’ve stopped. They’ve reached the edge of Maran territory, the no-man’s-land where our warfront shifts to our enemy’s, the limit of where they can go.
I look past the forest to where a clearing slopes down into the valley that leads into unfamiliar land. This is what finally makes me slow to a stop. My ears ring with a high-pitched buzz, and my breaths come in labored gasps. The look on Pira’s face still hovers in my mind, haunting me, and I realize that I’m so unused to her acting on our side that her help frightens me. It means she knows just how desperate our mission is, and how much we need it to succeed.
I should feel some sense of relief that we’ve escaped the Strikers chasing us, but all I feel is the unfamiliar dirt under my feet and the chill in the wind that whips through the clearing. Jeran and Adena halt beside me too, shivering, neither uttering a word, their faces turned down toward the valley, where the oncoming evening stretches long shadows across the land. Red comes last to stand on my other side. In him churns an old fear, a terror borne from firsthand knowledge of the kind of darkness that we’ve just entered.
We have officially stepped into the Federation.
THE
WARFRONT
THE KARENSA FEDERATION
22
It doesn’t take long before we stumble across the first evidence of enemy soldiers making their rounds through this newly acquired territory.
Prominent on the forest floor are the telltale signs of soldier tracks, the shape distinctly different from ours, the toes rounded while Maran boots come to a sharper point. There are few at first, one here and another twenty yards away, but gradually they become more regular until there’s a solid path through the woods, made by soldiers clearly confident that no one is using the prints to track them.
We move invisibly in the lengthening twilight. Jeran and I stay in the trees, scouting ahead, while Adena makes her way on the ground, blending in so well with the tall, thick ferns crowded beside tree trunks that sometimes I completely lose her. Red moves with her, the most conspicuous by far, his muscled form a dark shape in the shadows of the trees. I keep a constant eye on his surroundings, ready to throw a warning if there are any signs of soldiers nearby.
We must have traveled for several miles by the time we come across tracks more regular and numerous. Here, the trees grow more sparsely too, and we find ourselves approaching the section of the valley that I’d glimpsed from the top of the hill as we crossed the warfront.
Red is the one who stops us first. He halts abruptly, then narrows his eyes in the direction of the clearing. I feel a tug in my mind from him, as if he’s calling out for me to slow down. I look down at him from my vantage point in the branches to see him nod at me.
Careful, he tells me before looking ahead. Then he says a Karenese word that I’ve never heard before, for which there’s no equivalent in Maran.Trains incoming.
I frown down at him at that.Trains?A thought in his mind spills into mine, flooding me with the image of a black engine billowing smoke into a blue sky, giant metal wheels churning in sync with one another, and a series of dozens and dozens of metal carriages chugging one after the other into oblivion.
Now I know the wordtrains. I’ve seen wreckage of them before, part of the Early Ones’ ruins. We assume that they were once a mode of transportation, when there were things like ships in the sky as surely as in the water. But I hadn’t thought the Federation had them, functioning ones, these enormous monsters that belched ash and soot as they roared across the land.
But Red says it again.Train station, he tells me, nodding at the clearing up ahead.
I sign the same to Jeran, struggling to explain what it is, and then down at Adena. We pause, listening for sounds of soldiers, before slowing our pace and inching forward.
Then I do hear it. The sound of soldiers’ voices, speaking Karenese, coming and going as if busy with something or other. From several trees away, Jeran crouches low in the branches and points in one direction, through the trees and into the clearing.
I move along my branch until it crisscrosses with that of another tree, make my way onto it, and then peer toward where Jeran’s pointing.
There, before me, is a sprawling sight. Several Federation campsites dot the space where the trees thin out, and then, a short distance from them, is a building with lanterns twinkling against its walls, built in front of a long metal track that snakes far off into the valley until it disappears over a hill. Sitting in front of this building, partially obscured by a curtain of steam, is a great black engine lined with silver paint, its enormous wheels extending back to a second compartment, its trail of carriages running far down the track.
A train station.
Soldiers bustle everywhere there, and from this distance, they appear like a swarm of black ants—their uniforms and shadows melting into one another—as they load boxes and crates onto carts and then head back to the station, unload, and then head out to the campsites scattered across the land. Elsewhere on the land are plots already churned into dirt by workers, upon which are unfinished buildings with long fences coming up around them. Defense compounds, I realize with a sickening start at the sight of half-constructed watchtowers. The Federation is already beginning to strengthen their presence here in the new land along the warfront.
Jeran glances questioningly at me, then points down at the nearest campsite, where a small patrol of Federation soldiers have set up their tents within the last few lines of trees. They’re perfect for what we need.
Red, I say through our link. When he looks up at me, I nod through the trees. This close, the link between us tugs sharply at my mind, and I can feel the rapid rhythm of his heart and the rumble of breath in his throat.
We’ll be watching you, I remind him.
He nods.Keep close as you can when you trail me, he responds.The train will lead us back into the capital. All the trains converge there.
The capital of the Federation. My heart squeezes tight. I can no longer tell if it’s anxiety from Red, for having to return to the darkness he’d emerged from, or if it’s my own, for venturing in for the first time.
Good luck, he says. I startle at the final words from Red through our link, and when I look down at him, he’s pressed his hand to his chest in a Striker’s salute.
And in this instance, I am overwhelmed with the fear that I’m going to lose my Shield again, just like I’d failed to protect Corian. I’m about to let Red walk back into the Federation that had twisted him into this half-man, half-machine weapon.
