“Hello?” He said. “Hello, this is Beckett. There is an emergency…”
A burst of chattering feedback answered him, then resolved into a voice. “…hand off the button, if you want to listen. What is it?”
“This is Detective-Inspector Beckett. I have had word from my men that we are in imminent danger. You need to stop the train.”
“What…” more feedback. “…danger?”
“I don’t know what it is. I just need you to stop the train.”
“…stop here.”
“Yes, stop here,” Beckett said, his voice rising. “Stop the fucking train.”
“Soder Pass…” the voice came back. “…cking CAN’T stop…”
“Shit,” Beckett said, inconsiderate as to whether he was speaking to the man at the other end of the horn or just to himself. If they were on the Soder Pass bridge, then the conductor was right-they couldn’t stop, because there’d be nowhere for them to go. Just a train on a bridge, five hundred feet in the air over a rocky gorge. They wouldn’t be safe until they reached the other side.
He drew his gun and, after a moment, fumbled the brass cartridge of veneine out of his pocket. He tugged his sleeve up to expose the plug on his arm-that strangely alien lump of brass affixed to his weathered skin. Beckett took a deep breath, then set the cartridge against it. Again, the sharp stabbing sensation, the spreading coolness that vanished almost at once. Beckett felt his head lighten and start to drift away, buoyed by the sound of gears and rushing water, and noticed with a vague indifference that this had been too much. He shook his head to clear it; his heart pounded in his ears and he smelt blood.
“Shit,” Beckett said under his breath. He took hold of the grip of his revolver, squeezed it, made himself focus on the texture. He resisted the urge to close his eyes-he was leery of closing his eyes while on veneine, now-instead stared at the black, dull metal of the gun. “Shit, I don’t have time for this,” he said out loud, forcing his thoughts to dwell on the weight of the pistol, the straight lines of the barrel, the smooth grip in his palm. He tried to take a step and felt his legs wobble uncertainly, then gritted his teeth against the buzzing in his mind and threw open the door between the cars.
Outside the train cars was a small, iron-railed platform connected by chains and hitches to the platform of the next car. The space between the two was very small, but the drop between them, Beckett could see, was precipitous. The Emperor’s train trundled slowly along Soder Pass-beneath the grate there were stiff iron rails and railroad ties-below that, only the lattice of girders that held the bridge up. There was nothing but those girders for a span of five hundred feet at least, as they crossed high above the otherwise-inaccessible Soder Gorge. Above, the blue vault of the sky, cleared of Trowth’s persistent cover of pollution, stretched away to some infinite height, evoking that agoraphobia that lurked in the heart of all city dwellers.
The valley was dry and lifeless. Gray scree and stunted trees, barely visible at this height, crawled past below. Beckett noticed a sense of vertigo fluttering up from his stomach, but it contended with and lost to the veneine that had firm control of his mind. He crossed to the next car which, like the first, was stocked primarily with secondary ministers-third-cousins of prominent Family members, scrounging for whatever opportunity might present itself. The Emperor trailed men like this in his wake, like the detritus pulled after a ship. Beckett examined the pasty faces with their confounded and aghast expressions as he barged into their private coach. It was hard to imagine any of them masterminding a plan to assassinate the Emperor, Beckett considered, but easy to imagine any one of them getting involved. A new emperor meant new opportunities for advancement, and if there’s one thing that third-tier Family members knew when they saw it, it was an opportunity for advancement.
Of course, I don’t even know what I’m looking for. No one could have brought any guns onto the train. There were no oneiric munitions, no phlogiston munitions. Tell me I’m not looking for a madman with a knife in his pocket. There were a lot of pockets on that train to search. Beckett crossed ahead to the next car. What am I even doing? There was a full contingent of Lobstermen in the car before the Emperor’s. The others-he saw as he moved through them-were filled with ministers, second ministers, sub-ministers, ministers-adjunct, secretaries to ministers-adjunct, and the assorted valets, servants, wives and mistresses that must necessarily accompany the members of a court. I don’t even know what I’m looking for, Beckett thought to himself, as he threw about various vicious glares, in the hopes that someone with a guilty conscience, mistakenly believing that he’d been found out, would abruptly reveal himself.
He’d crossed all the cars but the last two-the one directly before him contained twelve Lobstermen, armed and armored, prepared for any eventuality, and so well-equipped to fend off assassins that they could hardly be helped and couldn’t even be hindered by one old coroner with an out-dated Feathersmith revolver. Beyond that was the Emperor’s personal coach, occupied by the William II Gorgon-Vie himself, a few trusted aids, and probably at least two mistresses. The Gorgon-Vies had fairly notorious sexual appetites, and an equally-notorious willingness to indulge them.
It was incomprehensible that the Lobstermen had been infiltrated-the Emperor’s personal guard was composed of only the most fervently loyal soldiers, and only those who had already been serving for years. And it was equally incomprehensible that an assassin, intent on the Emperor’s life, could get past one of them, much less a whole traincar full. This left two basic options: either someone in the emperor’s personal retinue was an assassin, or else someone had planned this all out very poorly, and was stuck with a platoon of battle-hardened, blood-and-bone armored, invincible supermen between him and his target.
On the roof, maybe? Beckett wondered, as the train began to screech to a halt. What…? He flicked aside a curtain by the window and looked out-they were only halfway across the bridge. Why are we stopping? He snatched from the wall the brass horn that let him speak to conductor. “Why are we stopp-” Beckett began, but was interrupted by the tortured shriek of twisting metal. The train lurched-forward, then back, tossing the passengers helter-skelter. The floor buckled, knocking Beckett from his feet, as the front of the car actually raised into the air with the unimaginably loud, screaming, groaning sound of the train car being destroyed, a sound of unavoidable magnitude.
Like a wave, Beckett’s car rose up and up, slowly coming to a stop and then pausing, for a bare instant, at the peak of its rise, to come crashing forward, hurling Beckett against the door which gave way beneath his weight. He fell out into the open light, and had to scramble to grab hold of the railing, gripping tight to keep from falling from the bridge. He watched his gun spiral away towards the stony valley bottom.
Ahead-below-the Lobstermen’s car hung suspended, like a fly trapped in a spider web, in a vast, messy gnarl of… Beckett blinked, sure he was hallucinating again. Vines. They were thorny vines, crushing the car like an old tin cup, wrenching steel girders from the bridge, snapping about in the wind like slender whips. The car was fully twenty feet below, affixed to the shattered bridge by thick cords of vegetation. The platform Beckett was grappling with shifted suddenly, and he realized that the front end of his car was leaning perilously off the edge of the rails, dangling above the Soder Valley.