Lili Crow - Wayfarer

I shouldn’t have done it right. She’s just going to sell them. If she didn’t bend too much, it wouldn’t hurt. The Strep’s scream had punched her, Potential like a mailed fist right in the solar plexus, and she’d spilled to the stone floor of the workshop, unable to breathe. The thought that maybe she’d suffocate and save Laurissa the trouble had made a shallow choked sound come out—one her stepmother had to have thought was a whimper instead of a traitorous laugh, because she didn’t hit Ellie again.

At least the Strep was going to be more careful about hitting her where it would show, now. Mother Hel had accomplished that much.

Hooray.

Her pale hair lifted on a breath of cinder-laden wind, and Ellie hunched her shoulders. If she held herself just right, she could breathe well enough.

“ Seeeeeeal intaaaaaact! ” the platform master yelled, grabbing and spinning the spoked breakwheel with callused hands. Ellie watched the shifting, cascading Potential wed to true-iron, and the train settled with a massive mechanical sagging sound. “ Breaaaaaaak now! ”

She could sense, almost-See, the breakwheel’s heavy-duty charming interacting with the train’s seal, folding it away in layers and feeding it back into the wheels and rails crackling with pressure and live Potential. Those who worked in the railyards had to have Affinity for true-iron—at least it was some insurance against Twisting.

Sometimes Ellie wondered when her own Affinity would begin to show. It would be a sign that her Potential was settling, and that would be a happy day. One step closer to freedom, or at least a better cage.

“Come on,” the Strep muttered. Her scarf fluttered, cinders catching in her long frosted mane. She didn’t bother with a crackcharm to shed them, and they didn’t stick to Ellie’s school uniform.

Juno wool repelled a lot of things.

The hatches opened, compressed air blowing and the train taking in fresh instead of mostly recycled.

“The Ten-Fourteen, New Aaaaaavalon to New Haaaaaaven, now docked!” the platform master, his greased hair with its crust of cinder-crown bobbing, yelled in a singsong. “Liiiiiine up, ladies and gen’lmen! Continuing service to Pocario, Old Astardeane, and Loden Province!” The words reverberated, a simple charm to make them ring over the train’s grumble and the noise of those gathered on the platform turning them oddly flat and soulless.

Going through the Waste was only barely scarier than staying here . She added it up inside her head again, and came up with the same answer. Two hundred and eighty credits. Not even a quarter of what she needed to pay for passage and indemnity. Good luck finishing school or getting apprenticed in another city, too, where she didn’t know anyone and had no money for rent or food. She’d be better off getting an apartment in one of the nasty parts of New Haven, except the trust wouldn’t pay for her to attend Juno if she wasn’t living in the family home. The Strep had mentioned as much this evening, casually, her candy-sweet tone dripping with venom other adults couldn’t hear.

The Strep had been awfully forthcoming about some things, but less forthcoming about the terms of her guardianship. If Mother Heloise hadn’t looked at the will—or was the Mother bluffing?

I don’t care. At least Juno’s a good education . All she had to do was get through the next couple years. Year and a half. Year and eight months. Whatever. Ebermerle had dormitories, and the prospect of getting out and away from Perrault Street was enough to give her a small warm feeling of optimism.

Just a tiny one, but you took what you could get.

The Strep glanced sidelong at her, and Ellie’s face ached with the effort to keep itself neutral. The woman had a goddamn genius for finding any trace of rebellion in a teenage girl’s expression.

Maybe I could be a diplomat. Dad always said they could keep a straight face under torture.

Oh but the thought of her father hurt. Seeing him cave in around the hole of Mom’s death, and then Laurissa suddenly there like a fey’s bittercake present, sweet candy frosting hiding nasty underneath . . . God.

If there was a God, Mithrus Christ would strike the Strep down. For a moment she was lost in the fantasy—Mithrus descending from iron-colored clouds, book and whip in hand, pointing at the Strep. For the crime of being evil, you are condemned to . . .

That was a problem. Ellie couldn’t think of any afterworld dire enough. Better to plan her next cred-grab. If she did it subtly enough, the Strep didn’t notice a few credits missing from her purse here and there.

There was always Southking Street, too. Even an unlicensed charmer could always make some cash on the sly there, but with her Potential still unsettled, she had to take half price for anything, because of the higher risk of Twist or side effect. Then there was the danger of being caught, though the jack gangs that extorted protection money from anyone vulnerable enough were a bigger headache.

If she could just stay afloat a little longer, work a little harder, she could survive the Strep. Maybe even escape early.

“ Mar guerite!” the Strep cooed, and Ellie returned to herself with a jolt. “ Lit tle sis ter, how are you?”

Oh, hell . She sized up the girl in a swift glance.

Chubby, her hair a lank mass and her dark gaze half-dead, the Strep’s sister clutched a battered cardboard suitcase and flinched as the train let out another sonorous whistle. She looked as disheveled as anyone who had just come off a sealed train would, though there were damp traces on her round cheeks as if she’d washed—or had been crying. Her eyes were red too; cinder-laden recycled air wasn’t good for anyone’s tender tissues. She didn’t even have a hat and veil, just a plaid skirt and dingy kneesocks, a sloppy peach-colored boatneck sweater that could have done a lot for her if it wasn’t so baggy and dingy, and sensible, scuffed, unpolished shoes.

She looked like a refugee, or a poor country cousin. A kolkhoz girl, with no shimmer of Potential at all. How could she have absolutely none when the Strep was so high-powered? It wasn’t fair.

Ruby would call her a fashion disaster , and Cami would simply shake her head slightly, the compassion in her blue eyes somehow painful because it was so acute.

“Is that all you have?” Laurissa was clucking as if someone was grading her on a Motherly Façade of the Year performance. “Poor dear. Was it bad ?”

The girl flinched. “Not bad.” Even her voice was colorless. She didn’t seem to notice Ellie, watching the Strep the way a mouse will helplessly watch an uninterested—but still very close—snake.

Maybe she knows?

But the girl actually dropped her suitcase and threw her arms around Laurissa, who, amazingly, didn’t smack her for creasing the Auberme suit and the freshly ironed, very stylish Tak Kerak canvas trench coat. Ellie’s gorge rose, and she hastily looked away.

“BOOYEAH!” someone yelled, and a blur of motion burst from one of the train’s further hatches. “NEW HAAAAAAAAVEN!”

What the hell?

It was a boy, Ellie’s age or a little older. He was in an unfamiliar prep school uniform, his striped tie askew and toffee-golden hair sticking up anyhow. Three running strides and he was met by a pair of adults—a beaming mother with dark eyes and a father in a suit, both charmers with a haze-cloud of Potential around them, reacting uneasily as the train settled again.

She recognized him, of course. How could she not?

Avery Fletcher. Mother and father both born into charm-clans, and Dad had knocked back beers with Mr. Fletcher once or twice at the Charmer’s Ball or during other get-togethers. Since the Strep had a Sigil and Ellie had Potential, they attended those sorts of things.