Odd Girl Out

"We shall see," he said, pocketing the weapon and moving toward the door. "I shall let you know which train you will be taking."

He opened the door and paused. "And," he added, "I will be watching."

"Yes," I said. "I'll just bet you will."

Even with the Modhri's assistance, it took nearly four hours for the stationmaster to officially release me from my hotel room. Or maybe the delay was because of the Modhri. There would be some preparations he would want to make for our trip, and he probably preferred me kept on ice until they were complete.

I headed down the stairs again to the hotel lobby. Tas Yelfro himself was nowhere in sight, but one of the Halkas on his backup team was waiting at the main door with the news that our train would be arriving in two hours. I assured him we'd be ready, then headed across to the Spider storage area where Bayta had said Rebekah was waiting.

I'd told the Modhri I would figure out something to tell Rebekah. Over the long hours of my forced idleness, I had.

I told her the truth.

She listened in silence as I described the situation. "What do you want me to do?" she asked when I'd finished.

"That depends on what you're willing to do," I told her. "Option one is that you put your neck into the noose along with Bayta's and mine. Option two is to say no thanks, and be home in time for dinner."

She wrinkled her nose. "That would be a good trick."

"Actually, at the moment it would be simplicity itself," I said, pointing toward the station's service area. "There's a Spider tender parked right over there, ready to go. Usually Bayta's the one who coordinates these special travel arrangements, but I could probably muddle through the process without her this once. You and your coral could be aboard and out of the station before the Modhri even knows you're gone."

She looked in the direction I'd pointed, as if she could see through the wall by sheer willpower. "What would happen to Bayta if I did that?"

"Do you care?" I asked bluntly.

She looked back at me and smiled, a sad, wistful sort of thing. "This is a test isn't it?" she asked. "You want to know if I'm willing to risk my life for her. Whether I and the rest of the Melding are truly worth saving."

"It's a fair question," I pointed out. "I do know you're wiling to risk your life for your chunks of coral. Otherwise, you could have destroyed it back on New Tigris and slipped away. That kind of loyalty certainly counts for something."

"But the coral is family?" she said.

"The coral is family," I agreed. "It's a different thing entirely to take the same risk for a relative stranger."

"And if I'm not willing, I'm no better than the Modhri?"

"Or you're young and scared, neither of which I could really hold against you," I said. "Besides, in the grand scheme of things, what does it really matter what I think?"

"It always matters what a friend thinks," Rebekah said quietly. "Do you have a plan for us to use?"

"I have the opening moves of one," I said. "The details will depend on what the Modhri decides to do. I'll need Bayta aboard the train with us when we make our move."

"What if he leaves her here instead?"

"Then we'll have to tour around the galaxy for a while until he decides I'm stalling and brings her aboard so he can threaten her to my face," I said.

Rebekah's eyes unfocused. "No, he'll bring her along," she said slowly. "He likes keeping his eggs in one basket."

"Yes, I've noticed that," I said. "Let's hope he stays to form on this one." I looked at my watch. "Our train arrives in just under an hour, with a forty-five-minute layover. Plenty of time for us to make our arrangements. We'll have our usual double compartment, by the way, which we'll be sharing with your supposed crate of Melding coral."

"And the real coral?"

"Don't worry, it'll be right there with us," I assured her, smiling tightly. "Just leave that one to me."

One hour and forty minutes later, our train pulled out of the station.

I stayed in my compartment with my face pressed to the window from the moment Rebekah and I got in until the moment the conductors stepped back inside the train and irised the doors closed. I saw no sign of Bayta.

Nevertheless, half an hour after leaving the station, when I took Rebekah on a brief walking tour up and down the compartment car corridor, she confirmed that Bayta was indeed aboard.

"She's in the first compartment, the one across from the car door," she told me as she sat down on the edge of the bed in her compartment. "I don't know why I couldn't sense her when we first came in."

"She was probably still unconscious," I said, stepping back and leaning an elbow on the crate I'd positioned on the midline between our two compartments. It was a fairly inconvenient place to put the thing, actually, and I anticipated a few stubbed toes and barked shins in my future. But if someone started to break into one of our compartments I wanted to be able to quickly shove the crate into the other one and close the dividing wall. It might only gain us a minute or two, but sometimes that made all the difference. "But at least that explains why the Modhri made sure to drag out the cancellation of my murder charge."

"It does?" Rebekah asked, frowning.

"Sure." I pointed toward the front of the car. "The Modhri wanted Bayta along, but he didn't want us seeing where he'd stashed her. So instead of all of us just boarding the train at Jurskala, he had his walkers put her on a train going the other direction, took her off at the next station, and then loaded her aboard this train when it came through. That way, by the time we check in, she's already in and hidden."

"Only he doesn't know I can sense her," Rebekah murmured.

"There are a lot of things he doesn't knew," I sad, feeling a little of the worry lifting from my shoulders. All our erudite expectations aside, the Modhri could still have decided not to bring Bayta aboard our expedition until we reached our supposed destination of Benedais thirteen and a half days from now. That would have been awkward, since Rebekah and I needed to get off at Sibbrava a week earlier than that. "Anyway, I'm hungry," I went on. "Let's go to the dining car and get something to eat."

"You think that's safe?" Rebekah asked, looking at the door.

"The Modhri thinks you're blissfully leading him to the Promised Land, remember?" I reminded her. "He won't bother us. Besides, now that Bayta's awake we need a Spider to see us so she knows we're aboard with her."

"Oh. Of course," she said, standing up. "Now that you mention it, I'm sort of hungry too."

"Good," I said, giving the crate a tap as I moved toward her door. "By the way, how's your coral doing?"

She frowned toward the rear of the train. "He's all light," she said.

"It's not going to be a problem, you being this far away from him, is it?"

"It shouldn't be," she assured me.

"Good," I said. "Then let's go eat. By the way, have you ever tried onion rings?"