He kicked open the door to the dining car. It took three tries, because this was the door that had been stuck shut. When the hinges finally broke and sent the door cracking open, it knocked back three servants who’d been clustered around the other side, and another one leapt aside barely in time to avoid a broken nose. Everyone shouted at once when they saw who Tal was holding and the condition she was in. Several nobles—the wise ones—fled, heading for the open hallway at the other end of the car. Others pushed through toward Tal, their eyes alight with curiosity or, in several cases, a predatory glee. Chairs clattered as they were kicked aside. Bits of breakfast splattered on the floor as one woman shoved a table out of the way, a carnage of jam and butter smearing across the thick cream carpets. Tal barreled through it all, intent on getting through the horde of people and to Albinus, who could mend the Destroyer. And then maybe, while she was recovering, Tal would have time to think of some way to get Nyx free of both her oath and her prison.
The fire whirling around the Destroyer tightened. It went white-hot, roiling with barely-leashed energy. When Tal pushed past a table, it caught fire instantly, and the flames quickly spread to the dress of the lady standing next to it. Screams erupted as the nobles and servants surrounding them all tried to scatter at once, finally realizing the danger.
Someone stepped in front of Tal. He made to shove past them when he registered that it was the empress, and stopped. She took in the scene in a single, sweeping glance, the nobles around her falling back in a wave as her gaze scythed through them. She held out a hand and let it hover over her sister. Then she stepped back. “I can’t put out the fire,” she stated. Her posture was calm, but her words snapped with tension. She turned, grabbing an older noblewoman—a distant aunt of hers, who had bronze communication magic—by the arm. The woman squawked in outrage but went pale and silent at a look from Sarai. “Send a mental message to the conductor immediately,” the empress ordered. “He is to enact the emergency transportation magics. If we aren’t at the Alloyed Palace in less than thirty seconds, I shall have both him and you garroted and your families’ bodies hung from the city walls for the crows.”
The older woman shrank back in shock. A younger man, one who had the same hooked nose as the older bronze Smith, put his arm protectively around her shoulders. He was the Head of Transport, Tal recalled.
“You can’t enact the teleportation protocols!” the man protested, turning to the empress, raising his voice to be heard above the shouting. “It will ruin all the enchantments on the train, it’ll take me weeks to repair, we wouldn’t be able to use it at all in the meantime—”
Suddenly he stopped speaking. His mouth continued opening and closing but not a sound passed his lips. He blinked in surprise at first and put both hands to his throat, as if to feel for whatever was keeping his words penned up. Then his surprise rippled into a dawning horror, and his mouth opened wide, gaping.
He was suffocating.
Sarai watched him impassively, one hand lifted to control the flow of air around the man. “Albinus cannot treat my sister for this on the train,” she said. “He will need his office at the palace. And if she is not treated quickly enough, her magics will explode with a force no one here would wish to see. Hence my transport order.”
The man nodded frantically.
Sarai arched a brow. “I take that to mean you will no longer quibble about how long repairs may take?”
He nodded harder.
“Neither,” said the empress coldly, “will the new Head of Transport.”
The man reached out for her, his eyes glassy with tears, his grasping fingers gone knobby and white with panic. The empress swept one foot back as if she were dancing in the palace ballroom and the man overbalanced, falling to his knees and then onto his face. His shoulders shuddered and went still.
“One less for the crows,” Sarai murmured, then looked back at the older woman. “You’ve ten seconds remaining, and three more family members present on this train. That’s rather more math than I’d planned on doing so early in the morning. Send the message now and save us both the trouble, won’t you?”
The woman’s face had gone hard, her expression marble-carved as she gazed down at the young man at their feet. She raised her eyes. “Yes, Highness,” she said flatly. “I am sending it now.”
In Tal’s arms, the Destroyer spasmed again. She inhaled once, a sharp, shallow sound that Tal was surprised to have heard over the commotion. He looked down at her: wreathed in destruction and trembling with it, flames lapping angrily over the whole of her body. The smell of burning fabric wafted up. Both her clothing and his were beginning to singe as whatever invisible barrier that protected them began to corrode. She had never been burned by her own magic before. Tal knew, to his bones, that this could only mean she was about to lose control entirely. From what Sarai had said, that would be fatal for anyone nearby. For him, certainly…and potentially also for the Destroyer, if she could no longer protect herself from her own power.
Those who live by the rule of fear shall die by it as well, thought Tal, and immediately hated that his last thought would be a scripture.
The Destroyer’s eyes snapped open then, unfocused and unseeing. She inhaled again. This time when she exhaled, it was on a scream. Her back arched so violently that Tal had to scramble to keep his hold on her.
Around them, the contours of the train suddenly blurred. All of the metal went bluish and gleaming.
