The Mark of the Dragonfly (22 page)

“She’s not much younger than you,” Gee pointed out. “What will you do after she’s back with her family?”

“Well, I don’t think I’m ever going back to the scrap town.” As much as Piper longed to see Micah again, she didn’t have the money to get there, and she knew she had
to move forward with her life, no matter how hard it was to let go of the past. “I’ll stay in the capital, maybe, or move on to somewhere along the coast. I’ve never seen the ocean before.” Piper tried to summon the excitement she used to feel when she’d dreamt about these plans back in Scrap Town Sixteen, but she couldn’t banish the empty feeling that came when she imagined leaving Anna behind. “What about you?” she said, needing to change the subject. “Do you have family in the south?”

Gee shook his head. “My parents sold me when I was seven.”

“What?” Piper thought she must have heard him wrong.

Gee ran a finger over the twin scars that slashed his neck. “These marks are how the slavers value their purchases. Slaves as young as I was don’t usually get more than one slash, but since I’m a chamelin, I was considered a novelty.”

Piper stared at the scars, her own problems forgotten. “You didn’t tell me that part.”

“About the scars?”

“That you were a slave! I mean, you warned me about the slavers, but I didn’t know … your parents … they
sold
you?” The idea was incomprehensible to Piper. Her own father had loved her more than anything in the world. “What happened? How did you end up on the 401?”

“Luck, mostly. Turned out, the slavers who bought
me weren’t equipped to handle a chamelin, even a young one,” Gee said. A shutter had closed over his expression and his body had gone tense, but he kept scratching absently at the scars, as if a part of him still hoped to obliterate the marks. “I escaped six times. They always caught me, though. The last time I got away, I was sure they were going to kill me. Jeyne found me first.”

“She helped you escape?”

“No, she couldn’t. The slavers were right on top of me. I flew into a rail yard where the 401 was being repaired.” With his other hand, Gee made a little soaring motion in the air. “Jeyne pulled me out of the corner of a boxcar. I was still in my other form, scratching, biting—I’m sure I gave her a couple scars of her own in that fight, but I was desperate. Instead of handing me over to the slavers, she negotiated a price.” Gee’s mouth twisted in a mixture of humor and pain. “I never asked, but I’m sure she got me cheap. The slavers were tired of dealing with me.”

“Then she set you free?” The thought of Gee as a slave, of someone tying down his wings and using the dust on him, made Piper feel queasy.

The slavers could have taken him again that night in the field, she realized. He must have known it was possible, but he followed them anyway. He came for both of them.

“She tried to,” Gee said, interrupting Piper’s thoughts. “When I changed back to my human form,
she said she’d take me home. I was so angry—at my parents, the slavers, the world—I just screamed at her, told her I didn’t have parents or a home. When I couldn’t scream anymore, she said she’d give me a place on the 401. I’ve been here ever since.”

“I’m sorry,” Piper said again. “I misjudged you.”

“No, you got me right,” Gee said. He stopped rubbing the scars and wiped the sweat from his forehead, smearing the soot mark into a long dark streak. “I’ve been afraid for a while that Aron is going to shut down the 401. The train’s powerful but old. Aron’s factories have already churned out faster trains with deadlier defenses that run some of the major routes around the capital. Now he’s strictly working on steamships and airships. In a few years, he’ll probably abandon the railroads. We’ve avoided being shut down so far because we haven’t given them a reason. We deliver our cargo on time and we make sure our passengers are safe. Everything was going well. When you and Anna snuck on the train that night, I saw you as a threat to that.”

“We are a threat.” Piper’s heart thumped painfully. “If Doloman finds out that you’re protecting us, he’ll do a lot more than shut you down. You could all be thrown in prison.”

“He won’t find out,” Gee said. “We’ll get you to the capital and make sure you’re safe.”

“How can you be sure?” Piper said, trying to quell the fear that rose inside her. “Anything could happen.”
She ticked the possibilities off on her fingers. “Doloman could change his mind, decide to come after us here, maybe bring an army with him this time.”

“He won’t risk it.”

Piper couldn’t stop—her mind spun with all the possible disasters. “You just said the 401 is old. Well, what if we break down, or the train derails, or we get attacked by vicious raccoons—”

Lips twitching, he cocked an eyebrow at her. “We don’t see too many of those along the coast.”

Piper crossed her arms. “Well, I wasn’t expecting to see a chamelin on this trip either. And the train actually
could
break down.”

“Yeah, about that.” Gee gave her a searching look, and just as she had last night, Piper squirmed, as if Gee were staring right down inside of her. Something fluttered through her stomach. “The 401’s been running smoother on this trip than it ever has before,” Gee said. “I’m not worried about us breaking down.” He stood and headed for the door at the back of the car. “I’ve rested enough. We should get going.”

“Are you sure—” Piper started, but Gee was already out in the vestibule, and Piper scrambled to follow. She wanted to say something, to ask him why in the world he was risking his home and his freedom for her and Anna when he barely knew them, but the words caught in her throat.

Gee had his back to her, and he was inspecting
the canvas bellows connecting the cars. Light filtered through a hastily mended tear in the canvas. Piper recognized her knife slash. This was the spot where she and Anna had boarded the train.

“I’ll mend it better when we get to Noveen,” Gee said. “I’m more concerned about the pressure plates.”

“Pressure plates?” Piper stood at Gee’s shoulder and looked down at the metal platform where the canvas ended. By the dim light coming from outside, she saw a thin seam in the metal. “Is that what triggers the alarm?”

“Among other things,” Gee said. “The plate runs all the way underneath the canvas to the outside. If someone wants to get onto the train through the vestibule, they have to step on it, and when they do, it triggers the alarm and the flame vents.”

“That’s what happened to me,” Piper said. “I triggered the alarm, but I didn’t realize I’d done it by stepping on the pressure plate.”

“You did. I saw your boot prints on the pressure plate when I checked the vestibule over afterward.” Gee looked at the tear in consternation. “But how did you disable the vents and stop the alarm?”

“I didn’t,” Piper said. “They must have malfunctioned or something.”

Gee shook his head. “I checked the connections a dozen times. The vents to the fuel pipes were closed, but the igniter was still warm, as if it started to fire and then just shut down, which triggered the alarm to shut off too.
But there’s nothing wrong with the system. It should have worked.” He looked at her askance. “I thought maybe you’d done something to it, used a trick that you’d learned in the scrap towns, something we hadn’t thought of, to get past the system.”

“I
couldn’t
do anything,” Piper said, exasperated. “My coat sleeve caught on a bolt, and I wasn’t able to get it untangled in time. The last thing I remember is …” She hesitated, embarrassed to admit how stupid she’d been.

“What?” Gee said. “What is it?”

Piper felt her cheeks get hot. “I put my hand over the vent. I knew it wouldn’t stop me getting a stream of fire in the face, but I was scared out of my mind, so I just closed my eyes and hoped the thing wouldn’t go off.” She shot Gee a sideways glance, expecting him to be looking at her as if she were the queen of the idiots. Instead, she saw his pupils dilate and turn that same yellow color at the edges she’d seen before. Had she made him angry?

“Will you wait here a minute?” Gee asked her, and there was a note of excitement in his voice. “I’ll be right back.” He stepped around her and opened the door to the adjacent car.

“Wait, what’s going on?” Piper demanded, starting to follow him out of the vestibule.

“Just stay here,” Gee said, holding up a hand to stop her. “I’ll tell you when I get back, I promise.”

Reluctantly, Piper nodded and stepped back into the vestibule as Gee took off back toward the cargo areas.
What could he possibly be up to? she wondered. His moods changed so quickly Piper had a hard time keeping up. Maybe it was a chamelin trait.

She didn’t have long to wait. A few minutes later, Piper heard footsteps coming from the mail car, and Gee poked his head into the vestibule. His eyes were still alight with that strange excitement, and Trimble was with him.

“Piper, tell the fireman what you just told me,” Gee said.

A dozen questions filled Piper’s head, but she managed to hold her tongue. She showed Trimble how she’d cut through the canvas and told him what had happened with the vent. The fireman wore a thoughtful expression as he listened to Piper’s explanation. He and Gee exchanged several glances while she talked, and Piper found herself fidgeting, talking fast to get to the end of her story. Finally, after the fourth or fifth time they looked at each other, she couldn’t stand it any longer. “What?” she demanded. “Look, I’m sorry if I messed up your fire trap, or whatever it is, but we were running for our lives that night. We were desperate.”

“That’s usually how it happens,” Trimble remarked.

“What is he talking about?” Piper said, looking at Gee.

Instead of answering, Gee turned and checked the doors on either side of him to make sure they were closed securely. The air stank of burning coal, and there
was hardly enough room for the three of them in the vestibule. Sweat ran down Piper’s back in itchy little rivers. She couldn’t shake feeling like a trapped animal in the small space.

Trimble took a vial of black liquid off his belt and shook it. “Sarnuns made this chemical—intended to put it in their tobacco,” he said, “but it hardens too much under heat.” He popped the stopper and reached in his pocket with his free hand. He pulled out a match and struck it against the metal car. “Little help, Green-Eye?”

Gee nodded, but he coughed a couple of times, shoulders shaking, before he took the vial and poured the liquid into Trimble’s palm. The black substance was thick like molasses, allowing Trimble to hold a bit in one hand. He dropped the match into the middle of the black puddle.

Flames engulfed the liquid, burning brightly in the center of the fireman’s palm. Piper’s hands flew to her mouth. She stifled a cry at the fire licking along Trimble’s skin, but the man didn’t even flinch. Orange flames reflected in his blue eyes. Trimble made a fist, then opened it, revealing that the puddle of liquid had solidified into a ball. He rolled the fiery marble from hand to hand while Piper stared, transfixed. After a moment, he cupped his hands over the flaming ball and the fire went out in a soft huff of smoke.

The spell broken, Piper blinked and took a step forward.
She uncupped Trimble’s hands and turned his palms up. She already knew what she would see—a charred black ball—but the unmarked skin around it, not even hot, made her breath catch in her chest.

“How did you do that?” she said. “No, wait, don’t tell me. It has to be a trick, right? Something in the chemical that takes away the heat. Anna would know. She reads those science books.” She brushed the black ball with her finger, and jumped at the spike of pain. “Ouch! How did that not burn you?”

Trimble grinned lopsidedly. “Makes minding the firebox a lot easier, I can tell you that.”

A wave of dizziness passed over Piper and she had to lean back against the wall of the train car. She tried to think. There had to be an explanation, some deception behind what Trimble had shown her. But the longer she stood there staring at him and Gee—their calm expressions and that charred black ball—the more Piper had the creeping feeling it wasn’t a trick. But if that was so, then … “What are you?” she blurted.

“A fireman,” Trimble said helpfully. He still wore that lopsided grin.

“He’s just like you and me,” Gee said. His voice was hoarse from coughing. “But he has a special talent.”

“Not everyone thinks so,” Trimble said. “I don’t just go around showing everybody what I can do. The few that I have shown usually end up doing all this yelling
and carrying on, and then I have to worry that they think I’m some kind of monster.”

“Are you?” Piper couldn’t help asking.

“Hey, I’m—No!” Trimble put on a hurt expression. “I just have magic inside me that the fire responds to. It makes me immune to it, and I can manipulate it like a baker molds his dough.” His blue eyes pierced her. “I have a connection to it, the same way you do with machines.”

Piper shook her head. “Uh-uh. What I do is
fix
machines—with tools, with my hands. There’s nothing magic about it.”

“You closed the vents,” Gee said, “just by touching them and asking it to happen. The best machinists in Solace couldn’t have done that. And you made that slaver’s gun explode when he pointed it at you.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with the gun,” Piper insisted. “It was probably just poorly made. I got lucky, that’s all.”

“I don’t think so,” Gee said. “I think you were scared, and you protected yourself on instinct. The gun reacted to your will, to what’s inside you, the same way the fire responds to Trimble.”

“It’s a kind of synergy,” Trimble explained. “Your will speaks to machines in ways that normal people’s can’t. You’re a synergist—that’s what we’re called.”

Piper had never heard the word before or heard of
anyone in the world having magic powers. She would have scoffed at the idea if she hadn’t just seen Trimble calmly juggle a ball of fire. “You’re saying there are more people like you?” she asked.

“Like
us
,” Trimble said, “and yes, I think so, though I’ve never met any until now. But I’ve heard stories and rumors—it’s hard to separate truth from wild tales when you’re dealing with magic.”