Exploring the decimated city was harrowing. They soon found they were not the only survivors, though very few indeed had made it through the three tsunami waves. Those they did find were mourning incalculable losses: wives, husbands, children, friends, beloved pets. This was saying nothing of the livelihoods that’d been destroyed. Houses lay flattened. Merchant stalls had been obliterated, their wares scattered across the city—many already in the hands of opportunists.

  Though the waves had dampened the fires of the city, there was still no mistaking the station. Columns of dark smoke, smelling acridly of soil and blood, roe into the night sky like black spears aimed at the glowing eye of Nilldoran. Now that she had travelled in a sky-ship, actually met a living god, the planet did not seem so far off. She remembered her first sighting of a sky-ship, a mere week ago, as it had streaked over Yestermere. She’d known then something was afoot, a change in the world, but never had she imagined she would be swept up in it.

  And it was all because of Telos. Though he was not the instigator of these grand, cosmic event, somehow situations and people and powers were gathering around him. She could see it perhaps more clearly than even he could. It was as though Fate had chosen him. Perhaps Nereth’s curse had backfired in some way, or created some unintended consequence.

  Whatever the truth, she was committed to this path now—and certainly she was committed to Qala. She felt a pang of guilt not going with Telos, but she was no fighter, nor thief, and would rather not meet those trained mercenaries again.

  Besides, she thought, they’re relying on my knowledge of Engines.

  She was no mechanic, but being Aurelian she had spent the first two thirds of her life around them. She knew more than nothing, which was something.

  The station was a bleak sight.

  It was not a large place, having only four platforms, raised on wooden stilts. But its smallness served to emphasise the desolation. Clearly, the engineers had departed at the first sight of the tsunami, taking their Engines with them. One had not been fast enough and their Engine lay overturned, a pile of iron ruin, like the very Daimonic remains the Engines fed on.

  The wooden structures overhanging the platforms and sheltering them from rain—once bedecked with carvings of owls, the symbol of Virgodan learning—had all been toppled save for one at the farthest end. The sodden beams of the lone survivor leaned precariously and beneath their shade stood another Engine, one that had been abandoned altogether. It crouched in the shadow of devastation like a frightened fox cub escaping the hunt.

  “Well, we are not spoiled for choice,” Jubal remarked, drily.

  “Never look a gift horse in the mouth, as my mother would say,” Ylia replied.

  The overturned Engine lay sprawled across two of the railway tracks, its hideous underbelly exposed. The huge steel wheels, like discuses made for giants, uselessly projected out into air, reminding Ylia of the way of a beetle’s legs helplessly waved when it was unable to right itself. In this instance, the beetle was even hundred feet long and made of iron.

  Urgal leapt atop the wreckage in a single bound. Ylia tried to clamber up after him, grabbing an exposed piston rod, her hands immediately blackening with dirt, grime, and oil. The piston rod groaned and shifting slightly as she applied weight. As her hands swung back on the moving rod, she nearly lost her fingers to the wheel she’d set in motion. Cursing, she leapt down. She tried the climb again, this time gripping in a different place. Climbing is becoming my least favourite activity. Once the initial elation of progress wore off, it was just a hard and fearful slog. At least this time, if I fall, Jubal will catch me. She smiled at the thought, and the smile bore her upward all the way to the top.

  With one last heave, she got her waistline over the lip of the carriage and hauled herself onto the top of the wreckage. Glass windows stared up at the canvas of heaven. Inside, the carriage was plushly furnished with leather seating, tables, and even a metal tray where smokers might discard their goldleaf ash.

  She looked down to see how Jubal was faring. He was strong, but not aptly suited to climbing. She knelt and extended a hand. He grinned, gripping it, and she helped pull him up, not a little surprised by her own strength.

  “Ylia Hart,” Jubal said, wiping the smears of oil onto his cloak. “Have you ever considered archery?”

  She frowned. “No. Why do you ask?”

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  “With strength like that, you would make a natural archer. And selfishly, I should like to teach you, for I can then vicariously live my archery days again.”

  Ylia felt a pang in her heart.

  “I know your arm was broken, but I still don’t understand why you can’t shoot. Didn’t Qala heal it?”

  Jubal sighed, and she felt immediately guilty for the blunt way she had worded the sentence.

  He held up his right arm, extending it to its fullest flexion—which was still barely more than a right-angle.

  “There is some shard of bone in the wrong place. It seems magic can do many things, but it cannot simply erase things,” Jubal replied. “I cannot bring the bow to full tautness. The injury is not noticeable in day-to-day moments, but I am constantly aware of the limitation…” Jubal looked downward. It seemed he peered into a dark well of bad thoughts. Ylia knew that well; every time she had turned to drink, it had been because of the well, and its poisoned waters. She touched his arm and he looked up at her with surprise.

  “You can teach me then, Jubal. And I’ll shoot in your place.” Then she grinned. “But won’t it mean I ave to slice one of these off?” She pointed at her breasts.

  Jubal reddened, so much it showed even through the thick fur of his face. Four hundred years old, and yet he could still feel embarrassment over a woman’s body. Men were strange creatures indeed!

  “Well… Erm… I wouldn’t…”

  She laughed.

  “I’m only teasing, Jubal. Although apparently the women of the Forbidden Archipelago do just that as a cultural practice.”

  “Let us not talk of that place,” Jubal said. He had reverted again to his serious, sombre tone, which made Ylia all the sadder.

  They dropped down the other side of the wrecked Engine and made their way towards the final platform and Engine. It was a miracle it had survived the triple tsunami. Some aberration of geography had saved it from destruction, though its black-iron frame still gripped and glistened with seawater.

  “Hopefully it isn’t waterlogged,” Ylia muttered.

  The closer they got, the more it became clear—even to someone like Jubal who had never seen an Engine before today—why this Engine had been abandoned. It’d languished in terrible condition before disaster struck. Rust coated its exterior like the Kiss of Eresh. Of its six carriages, four were damaged: windows cracked, doors hanging limply from hinges, and one even bearing the dent of some huge fallen tree.

  The front segment—the Engine itself—looked like it had been torn apart and pieced together again at least three times. The parts were all of differently tinted metals, crudely soldered and hammered together. The spout from which smoke and steam would emerge was crooked. There was a crack in its side leaking black, stinking fluid.

  “Out escape plan is leaking,” Ylia said. “Great.”

  “Can it be repaired?”

  “If we had a day and access to a smithy…”

  “I see.”

  Ylia ran a hand over a name-plaque upon the Engine’s flank. In faded fold lettering it read “The Jensen”.

  “I have no idea who that is.” Engines were normally named after personages of no little fame, such as Emperors or Governors.

  “A local hero, perhaps,” Jubal said.

  Ylia patted the Engine. It was hot, which was at least something of a good sign. Clearly, someone had been tinkering with it before the waves came, perhaps seeing how much life it had left in it. She clambered up into the driver’s cabin, and examined the many levers, glass gauges (one of which showed the current dwindling Daimonsblood levels), and the firebox. Daimonic bones smouldered in the fire, though the heat and steam they gave off was minimal. She found more bones in a chest welded to the rear of the cabin. They looked frightening human, although she knew that this was because they had been broken into tiny pieces by some machine, for the actual bones themselves were colossal.

  “It only needs to get us to the next town,” Ylia called to Jubal. She emerged from the cabin and saw him looking up at her with what might have been admiration. She felt a flush of pleasure at the thought she could impress a four-hundred year old warrior. “It might be we can make it to Daimonopolis. There will be engineers there who specialise in repair.”

  “And when they ask us where we acquired this Engine?” Jubal said, raising an eyebrow.

  Ylia grinned.

  “I see no point in lying. We tell them the truth: we liberated it from the storm.”

  Jubal smiled in return.

  “So, can you get it running?”

  “Yes. But we need more Daimonsblood. Check the other wreckage for any decanters. I’ll feed the fire here with the bone. We’ll get this battered old bitch running yet!”