Burning Night: A Tale of the Everburning City

Chapter 23: Tabitha

"Heart of the abyss!" the engineer cried in frustration, as she spun the wheel to cut-off the reservoirs.

Tabitha smirked, as the dial held stubbornly at eighty-four miles per hour. "No land-speed record today?"

"No ma'am," the engineer said glumly, as she began pulling the brake lever. "But if you want to try for it another day, ask for Camille Telvan Lorec. I would love to show my little girl what working with a Crafter looks like. She's pretty sure my job is the dullest thing in the City."

The train squealed and screamed indignantly, desperately pulling the speedometer lower, and hauling the train into a slow gradual stop.

Just past the platform.

"Feel like we did this before," Tabitha remarked to Harold Reeves, who was breathing hard, trying to calm his nerves.

"I'm really not that fond of going that fast, madam crafter," Harold said, as he stepped off the train and onto the rails.

At the platform, Mathias was already speaking with a pair of soldiers, who were acting oddly deferential as they pointed to the nearest cable-car.

Tabitha smirked when she saw the brown armband on Mathias' arm.

"Missing something, mister Reeves?" Tabitha asked, as she stepped down.

"Oh, burn me! When did he do that?" Harold asked, patting his left arm with his right hand.

"Probably just before he jumped off the train without us noticing," Tabitha remarked. "I think he enjoys showing off."

But Tabitha smiled to herself, as she climbed up to the platform and marched towards the already primed cable car. It was more than a small comfort that the man assigned to her was so competent.

Mathias wordlessly unwrapped the brown armband and extended it to Reeves, who took it without comment and reattached it to his arm as he sat down in the car.

Tabitha turned to one of the soldiers standing nearby, and said "the engineer inside that train, a Camille Lorec, is suffering from a broken speedometer. It jams just over eighty miles an hour. Would you tell her I have her peaking at ninety-one?"

"I, of course, madam crafter," the soldier said, just as he shut the door to the car, and released the lock.

"Where does this car go?" Tabitha asked Mathias, who was already leaning on the corner beam in the front of the car.

"All the way to the last wall," Mathias replied. The tall shadow presented a convincing facade of comfort, but the eyes under his hat were as sharp and alert as they had ever been. "The soldiers at the station were surprisingly helpful. Apparently Varnell's project has been quite the fuel for the gossip bonfire."

"Really?" Tabitha asked.

"Soldiers on watch duty struggle to find interesting conversations. Staring at the Gloam is a lot like watching the sky, and just about as tedious," Mathias explained. "So when a group of recruits is working with Valkyries, or a company gets marched along the causeway right past them, it gets talked about."

"Okay. So we're definitely in the right area," Tabitha remarked, as the car carried them along at a brisk pace.

The car carried them for a few minutes into open fields, and Tabitha let herself sink into her own thoughts, thinking of how to handle Gerald once she found him.

It would be easy to isolate him from the squad. Outing him, and claiming that she was here to collect her chosen apprentice would give her all the grounds she needed to lead him off into a witness free location. And no matter how skilled, there was nothing a first-year apprentice could know that could threaten her.