With a cheated look on his face, Etrik disappeared off the far side of the roof.
I was exhausted, and drained from the extreme cold, by the time I got back inside the car. The upper hallway was full of people. Stewards were ushering terrified and distraught passengers into other cars. Master personnel were gazing in perplexed dismay at the fight damage and the trio of Ves-sorine corpses. Eleena was arguing heatedly with one of the master crewmen.
Everyone looked round and someone screamed as I slithered back in through the window. I must have looked a sight: caked in frost and frozen blood from the wounds to my arm and chin.
Crezia and Aemos pushed through the onlookers and reached my side.
'I'm alright/
'Let me look at that… Golden Throne!' gasped Crezia, twisting my head to study the gash in my chin.
'Don't fuss.'
'You need-'
'Now's not the time. Is Medea all right?'
Yes,' said Aemos.
'So you're all unscathed?'
'You're wounded enough for all of us/ Crezia said.
'I've had worse/1 said.
'He has/ agreed Aemos. 'He's had worse/
Eleena was still shouting at the train master, who was shouting right back at her. He was a tall, distinguished man in an ornate, brocaded version of the Trans-Continental uniform topped with a Navy-style cap. Clearly very old, his eyes, nose and ears had been replaced with aug-metic implants: primitive, functional devices finished in boiler-metal black that probably had been handcrafted for him by the locomotive's devoted engineers. Even his teeth, framed by a spectacular white tile beard, were cast iron. His name was Alivander Suko, and I later discovered that he had been master of the Trans-Atenate Express for three hundred and seventy-eight years. He looked like a bearded locomotive in human form.
I pulled Eleena back and faced him.
'I demand an explanation/ Suko growled, his voice reverberating from a mechanical larynx, 'for this… outrage. Nothing like this has ever happened aboard the Trans-Atenate. This vulgar violence and impropriety-'
'Impropriety?' I echoed.
'Are you responsible for this?' he asked.
'I would not have chosen for this to occur, but… yes/
'Detain him now!' Suko yelled. A pair of burly train guards who had withdrawn laspistols from the express's emergency locker the moment the alarms had started sounding, stepped forward.
There are three dead here, three more outside,' I said softly, looking into the train master's electric-shuttered eyes and pointedly ignoring the guards. 'All armoured, all armed… combat warriors. Do you really think it's a good idea to mess with the man who killed them?'
Silence fell on the corridor, colder and harsher than the ice storm still gusting in through the shattered window. All eyes were on us, including, to Suko's discomfort, the last of the gawping passengers still being herded out.
'Shall we continue this in private?' I suggested.
We went into one of the vacated cabins. I opened the hinged wooden cover of the suite's little cogitator, switched it to hololithic mode and pressed my signet ring against the data-reader. The little desk projected a hologram of the Inquisitorial seal, overlaid by credential details, followed by a slowly turning three dimensional scan of my head.
'I am Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn of the Ordos Helican/ Suko and his guards were speechless.
'Do you accept that, or would you like me to rotate slowly in front of you until you're convinced?'
The train master looked at me, so taken aback he barely knew what to say. 'I'm sorry, my lord/ he began. 'How can Trans-Continental assist the work of the mighty ordos?'
'Well, sir, you can get this train moving again for a start.'
'But-'
I'd had enough. 'I have been travelling incognito, sir. But not any more. And if I'm going to reveal myself as an inquisitor, I'm damn well going to behave like one. This train is now under my control/
We remained halted long enough for the engineers to service the brakes and secure the exploded windows. And long enough for the train guards, under my direct supervision, to search the entire vehicle for any other passengers without tickets.
Wrapped in crew-issue foul-weather gear, I went outside and retrieved Barbarisater, which complained fractiously about being left in the blizzard. I sheathed the whining blade and went to check on the three janissaries who lay sprawled and stiffening in the snow.
The express resumed progress at five and there were no more interruptions. We thundered out of the night and into a more temperate dawn where the land was thick with snow but the ice storms had abated.
Suko raced the locomotive right up to the safety margins to make up time. The express cut down through the southern extremities of the Ate-nate Range, descending through hill country and rocky glacial plains. If I'd been awake, I would have seen hard pasture and scree slowly blooming into forest and deciduous woodland, and then the first little hamlets of the vast Southern Plateau, sunlit in the morning air.
But I was deep asleep, my wounds dressed, Barbarisater slumbering fitfully at my side and Crezia watching over me.
I woke after five, with the express still making excellent time. We were due in at New Gevae at midnight. I'd given Suko strict instructions to send no word ahead of our plight.
It was likely that Pontius would try again at New Gevae. I studied the route map and thought about getting Suko to make an unscheduled stop at one of the satellite stations in the towns north of New Gevae. We could disembark and hire air transport, and the train could run on to the city.
I thought my implacable and attentive enemy might anticipate this move. And I also considered that arriving in plain view at a major city terminal might be the safer plan.
I lay on my cabin's cot, meditating as the lowland scenery of the plateau zipped by outside. Medea was up and around by then, hobbling painfully and using, of all things, my runestaff as a crutch. Only she would have the wit to dare such disrespect.
She limped into my cabin and flopped down on the edge of my cot, nursing her sore back. Crezia was asleep in the opposite berth.
'Never a dull moment, eh?' said Medea.
'Never/
She nodded over at Crezia. 'She didn't leave your side, Gregor. All day/
'I know/
'She's more than just an old friend, isn't she?'
Yes, Medea/
'You and your secrets/
'I know/
You never told me/
'I never told anyone. Crezia Berschilde deserved the privacy/
She glanced at me. 'Gregor Eisenhorn deserved the privacy too, don't you think? You may be a great and terrible inquisitor and everything, but you're a human being too. You have a life outside this awful work/
I thought about that. Sadly, I didn't agree.
