22
Evening had fallen over the hill, a deep purple dusk that chased the daylight to the west and left them with a clear sky and chilly winds, while at the front of the engine a great fire blazed on and on. The wind was taking most of the smoke away from them, although a low stink was still pervading the area, coating the back of Noon’s throat so that she found herself swallowing repeatedly, as if she’d eaten something rotten. Many of the passengers had retreated back inside their carriages, while a few had made small campfires on the rocky strip of ground alongside the line, sitting and sharing food and stories. It was still dangerous to be this close to the Wild – even locked away for a decade, Noon knew that – but the defeat of the monster had emboldened them. Noon imagined they thought it something of an adventure; or, at least, those with fine clothes and the best food did. The men and women in the poorer carriage wore different expressions; the expressions of people for whom this was yet another crippling setback. They would be late for their promised jobs; the homes they were heading for might not be there any more; the food and drink they had packed might not be enough.
Noon kept herself apart from them all, staying near Vintage’s rented carriage, while the scholar herself was gregariously moving from fire to fire, sharing her bottle of wine and chatting with everyone. Tormalin had attracted a small group of young women, who were cradling cups of wine in their hands and watching him with glittering eyes. None of them were sitting too close, but Noon thought that a sudden invasion by a pack of hungry worm-touched wolves wouldn’t have been able to drag their eyes from his remarkable face.
She wandered towards the rear of the carriage. Vintage had insisted they light all the lamps inside and open the curtains, so that the winnowline became a series of beacons against the night. Above them, the clouds had mostly cleared and the stars were a layer of gaudy gauze while the hills merged into a single great beast in the growing dark. Far behind them was a soft blush of light against the horizon: Mushenska. So much space, so much air. It had been like this out on the plains, where the world had seemed limitless – when she had believed that the grasslands, and her way of life, would go on forever.
There was a dark shape on the ground just behind the end of the carriage. Noon paused. It looked like a bundle of clothes. Had something fallen from the winnowline when it had been struck by the creature? Noon walked over. The voices of the people by the fires grew quieter, the crunch of her boots on the gravelly ground louder than she would have liked. Her breath caught in her throat and she realised that the bundle on the ground was a person, their blank face turned up to the sky. There was another fallen shape just beyond it. Neither were moving. Noon knelt down next to the first one, holding her hand above the face, not quite daring to touch the bare skin. It was a boy, a small brown birthmark in the middle of his right cheek. His eyes were open. She pressed her fingers lightly to his chest, and was relieved to feel a heartbeat; faint, but very fast. Swallowing hard, Noon stepped over him to find a girl of around the same age, curled over onto her side as though she had chosen to drop down and sleep on the steel rails. There had been a small group of children running around earlier, she remembered, chasing each other and entertaining themselves in the way that children did.
‘What . . . hey, kid.’ She gently shook the girl, but her head flopped back and forth, unresponsive. Noon stood up and walked back, trying to ignore the cold feeling of guilt that was uncurling in her stomach. She couldn’t be blamed for this, it had nothing to do with her . . .
A figure stepped out of the shadows, moving silently. A tall white woman, wiry and contained. Her forearms were bare, and Noon could see the muscles standing out like cords. The woman’s hair was grey and pushed back from her face in soft waves, but her face was unlined. There was a bat-wing tattoo on her forehead. As she looked at Noon she smiled, a thin tensing of her lips, and her eyes glittered.
‘It seems I have found you, Fell-Noon. You did a pretty good job of running, I’ll give you that. Will you come without a fuss?’
Noon stumbled backwards. Her heart was beating so fast her fingers were tingling.
‘You would hurt children?’
‘Don’t be so dramatic. Just took enough to take you down, which I don’t think will require very much at all. I am Agent Lin. It’s time for you to come back to the Winnowry. Or die. I don’t mind which.’
Out in front of the carriages, the other passengers were still sitting around their fires, laughing and talking. Noon opened her mouth to shout to them, and then felt fear close her throat. Agent Lin wasn’t here for them, after all.
‘Are you resisting me, Fell-Noon?’ Agent Lin held up her hands, palms to the sky. ‘Are you going to try to fight me?’
‘I’m not going back,’ said Noon. The words felt like tiny stones in her throat. They weren’t strong enough. ‘I’m not going back to that fucking hole.’
Two points of green light blossomed into being over Agent Lin’s hands. As Noon watched they grew into two whirling pools of flame, painting the woman’s face into a ghoulish mask. Frantically, she felt within herself for a scrap of winnow-fuel, but there was nothing. The terror and the frustration boiled up into her chest.
‘I will fight you!’
At her shout, she heard a babble of confused voices rising behind her, but Agent Lin was already moving. The two fireballs she had summoned were in the air and flying towards her like comets, and she had to dive into the dirt to avoid being burned alive. The fireballs exploded onto the stones to her right, showering her with gravel. People were shouting now, yelling at each other to get back. Belatedly, Noon thought of the other fell-witches powering the engine. Surely they would join this fight, and then she would be dead within moments.
‘Get away from me! I’m not going back!’
The woman continued to advance, smiling faintly. More green light was growing between her hands – she was building a single point of light now, curling it with her palms into a brightly glowing starburst.
‘Do you really think you have a choice, Fell-Noon? You and I both know there are no choices when it comes to the Winnowry.’
Noon scrambled to her feet and ran around the side of the carriage, crashing through the door forcefully enough to bark her shins on the steps. Inside, she glared around the room at Vintage’s belongings – the bags, the boxes of books, the crates of artefacts, the empty plates – before spotting a simple vase of flowers on a small side table. They had been placed there at the beginning of the trip and were past their best, but it was all she had. Noon grabbed the flowers out of the vase, water spattering over her shoes, and she drained the last of their life energy. It was a pitiful taste of what she needed, and the flowers wilted in her hands, black and dead and—
The windows on one side of the carriage blew out, showering her with glass as the whole contraption rocked wildly to one side. Everything was briefly filled with green light, and her ears popped. She had one brief thought – How powerful is this woman? – before she was thrown into the wall. The vase smashed to pieces under her.
‘Had enough yet?’
Agent Lin was in the doorway, leaning there as though they were discussing the weather. Outside there were raised voices, and Noon thought she could hear Vintage shouting orders. Tormalin’s sword was back in the carriage, she realised, carefully packed away again in its long leather case.
Noon jumped up and threw her hands forward, throwing a tiny blast of winnowfire, bright and almost entirely without heat. Lin flinched away from it, and while her head was turned, Noon ran through the door into the next carriage. There were people here, their faces blank with shock – some were already moving to the door, dragging children out by their cuffs. Noon lunged at the closest, a thick-set man with large oiled moustaches, and took his fat hand in both of hers. In her panic, she almost killed him. As it was, he dropped to the floor in a dead faint, his face grey, and Noon spun, conjuring the biggest fireball she could and throwing it behind her. Agent Lin was there, but the winnowfire exploded against the wall, missing the woman by a good two feet. Orange fire licked up the expensive silk curtains, and a section of blistered wall fell away.
‘Very poor, Fell-Noon, very poor.’
Half falling over the man she’d drained, Noon made to run for the door, but Agent Lin flicked a hand and a bullet of green fire flew down the carriage, missing Noon’s face by no more than an inch. She gasped, holding up her hands, feeling the winnowfire boiling up through her own fingertips, but another bullet of fire flew past her – she smelled burning hair – and her concentration fled. Agent Lin walked slowly forward, two daggers of green fire balanced on the ends of her fingertips. Noon dropped her hands and retreated.
‘I’m doing what I can here to take you home in one piece,’ Agent Lin advanced. She looked utterly calm, the daggers of fire seeming almost like solid objects. Noon could not take her eyes from them. She had never seen the winnowfire form such shapes. ‘I don’t know why I bother, really. You must have caught me in a good mood.’
‘Home? That place isn’t my home. I’ll die before I go back there.’
‘Oh, don’t make it too easy for me. I have to have my fun somehow.’
The backs of Noon’s heels knocked against solid wood, and she reached behind her for the door handle. Perhaps, if she could get into the next carriage, she could hide. It might be her only chance.
‘Stay where you are!’
Lin threw the daggers and Noon dropped to the floor, narrowly avoiding their wicked points. They crashed into the door behind her, splitting the frame, a spreading pool of fire moving hungrily over the wood. She stood up and, ignoring the blisters that popped into existence on her hands, wrenched the door open, only to be met by the sight of Vintage, her crossbow held in front of her and a steely glint in her eye.
‘Get down!’
Noon dropped to the floor in time to see Agent Lin thrown backwards by a crossbow bolt to the shoulder. The woman snarled with a mixture of pain and rage, but without hesitation she reached up and snapped the bolt away. There was blood on her shirt but it was just above her collar bone – Noon doubted she’d been seriously hurt. Then Vintage had hold of Noon and was dragging her to her feet and through into the next carriage.
‘Run, girl!’
She ran.
Through the kitchen carriage into the next, dodging boxes and sacks, she could hear shouting and screaming from outside, and she wondered what had happened to Vintage. Surely the scholar wouldn’t be foolish enough— there was an explosion from behind her, and more green light. The door had been blown off, but she was already at the next partition. The violence of the initial attack had torn the covering from the connecting space between the carriages. Noon took a breath and swallowed it down. She couldn’t keep going forward – if she went forward far enough, she would just meet more fell-witches.
She scrambled up the side, using the door frame as leverage, until she pulled herself up onto the roof of the carriage. The late evening, which had seemed so peaceful only a few moments ago, was full of panic. Parts of the carriages behind her were on fire, and she could hear the confused shouts of men and women trying to retrieve their possessions and locate their children. She ran towards the engine and glanced over the side – she saw shocked faces looking up at her.
The slippery roof under her feet seemed to jump to one side, and she crashed to her knees. Looking up, she saw a sinister wave of green fire curl up at the space between the carriages, and then climbing up in its wake was Agent Lin. The left-hand sleeve of her shirt was crimson with blood.
‘That’s enough now.’ The expression of faint amusement had vanished from her face. ‘I’ve chased you for long enough, Fell-Noon. You come home, or you die. Last chance.’
‘No!’
Gathering the last of what she had, Noon cupped her hands and pulled them apart, drawing the energy that stormed inside her into a maelstrom of green fire. It boiled in front of her, tongues of flame licking and flickering, growing bigger and bigger – the largest fireball she had ever attempted. She could feel the confines of it growing weaker as her control of it lessened. The muscles in her arms singing with the effort, she shoved the ball of fire out, throwing it across the roof towards Agent Lin.
It was better than her first attempt, and it exploded with an impressive roar, but it was too large with too little winnowfire energy within it. Agent Lin twisted her body away, her head down as she pulled up her cloak to cover herself – too late, Noon saw that it was made of heavy treated leather and it shone in the light – and the fire passed over her, as harmless as a blustery shower.
When she straightened up, the Winnowry agent was pin-wheeling her arms, faster and faster. Noon had a moment to wonder what she was doing when she saw the circles of green fire growing around the woman, bands of lethal flame. And then another figure appeared behind her, stumbling out of the dark, a long straight sword raised over his head.
Agent Lin must have seen something in Noon’s face, or perhaps it was the simple tilt of her head, because the woman spun round and released one of the rings of fire towards Tormalin. It curled across the roof, licking sparks off the metal plates, and Tor was forced to jump out of its way, shouting with alarm and falling to his knees.
The second ring was for her. Noon staggered back, perilously close to the edge of the roof, and still she felt the heat crisping her clothes as it passed. She stumbled, falling onto her backside, and before she could get back up, Agent Lin was approaching, her hands full of fiery daggers again. As she spoke, she threw them. They landed to either side of the cowering Noon.
‘I honestly don’t know, Fell-Noon, whether I should kill you or not. I would like to, I would like to very much, but I suspect what they have waiting for you at home will be even worse.’
‘Kill me, then. Because I’ll kill you, first chance I get.’
The woman stood over her now. Her softly curling grey hair was in disarray and there was a smudge of blood on her chin. Agent Lin raised her hand, summoning a long shard of brightly shining fire. Noon could already imagine how it would feel, plunged through her chest.
‘Oh, well. If you insist.’
Agent Lin formed a fist, and a white ghost fell on her from above. It was Fulcor, her fur brilliant under the moonlight and her leathery wings filling the whole world. Noon heard Lin give a startled shout, and then the woman was gone, knocked from the side of the roof onto the dirt below.
‘Fulcor?’
The bat rose up into the night, followed by a barrage of fireballs. Noon got to her feet to find Tormalin next to her, taking her arm.
‘Quick, while that fiery lunatic is distracted. We have to get out of here.’
They ran to a ladder at the edge of the roof and descended into chaos. The passengers were crowded at the edge of the line, while Agent Lin fired knives of fire at the rapidly retreating shape of Fulcor. Vintage appeared out of the crowd; part of her coat was smoking and singed, but otherwise she appeared to be unharmed. The far carriage, the one containing all of Vintage’s supplies and the artefacts she hoped to trade with Esiah Godwort, was fully aflame, burning so brightly that Noon had to shield her eyes from it. Other parts of the winnowline looked like they would be in a similar situation shortly.
‘Run, my dear, before she—’
Agent Lin screamed, a noise of combined rage and triumph, and an entire wall of green fire swept towards them. Noon saw it engulf a man and woman who didn’t move out of the way fast enough, and in the next instant they were screaming horrors – the woman’s hair flew up like a taper, and she saw the man press his fingers to a face that was already melting.
It burns so hot, thought Noon faintly. Winnowfire burns so hot—
Tormalin was barrelling her to the edge of the path and suddenly they were half falling, half scrambling down a steep incline, Vintage hot on their heels. The sky above their heads was rent with green fire, but the woods ahead of them were dark and thick. They ran between the trees, quickly losing themselves in the dark, and Noon thought she’d never been less afraid of the Wild.