The explosion didn’t begin with flame. It began with a pressure wave that drove the air straight out of Ren’s lungs.
Fifty paces west of Platform One, the four-story brick metal tube of Coal Silo Three bulged outward like a wineskin struck by a maul. A split-second later, two hundred tons of crushed hard coal dust mixed with Master Garrow’s boiled away turpentine ignited in a total fuel-air deflagration.
KER-THOOOOOM.
The cone-shaped copper roof of the silo snapped off its iron rivets. It spun into the blizzard like a flaming coin. A column of blinding orange fire roared two hundred feet into the night, lighting up the snow-covered roofs of Low-Khorat with the terrifying bright glare of an artificial dawn. A heartbeat later, the backup rupture struck. The bone-shaking wave tore through the underground town gas mains, severing the high-pressure feed lines that supplied the thirty arc lamps lining the tracks.
Above Platform One, the violet-white glare died in a violent cascade of electric green sparks.
Pop. Pop-crack.
The heavy glass globes shattered in rapid row, raining hot crystal shards into the slush. Darkness—total, choking, and choked with rotten-egg black smoke—slammed down upon the marshalling yard like an iron trapdoor. The blinding shift from violet radiance to pitch-black gloom threw the entire royal outer edge into instant, howling disarray.
“Move!” Vane roared through the roar of falling stonework.
Ren shoved the cast-iron storm grating aside with his shoulder. He erupted from the check hole, boots sinking six inches into freezing slush and crushed limestone ballast. Behind him, Vane scrambled out with the agile, desperate striking force of a cornered wolf. His blackthorn stick was held like a dueling saber. His grey eyes shone with cold fury in the darkness.
The platform was complete pandemonium.
Through the rolling black smoke, shouting voices rose in scared confusion. The twenty royal arbalesters, their night vision ruined by the flash, were shouting conflicting orders. That turned in blind circles as the freezing blizzard whipped their oilskin coats.
“Sabotage at the silos!”
“Hold your ranks! Form on the passenger carriages!”
A repeating heavy steel crossbow discharged with a vicious thwack-clack, its steel-tipped quarrel chewing through the wooden side of an empty baggage heavy cart forty paces away. On the overhead narrow high walkways, the gunners in their leather blast-masks panicked, swiveling the heavy rotary Gatling projectors blindly toward the outer edge fences, firing short, stuttering bursts of lead that sparked uselessly off distant brick retaining walls.
Trak-trak-trak.
“Under the tender!” Ren shouted through the din, staying low, his body bent nearly double against the driving blizzard.
The two men dove beneath the high iron flank of Locomotive 808’s second coal tender.
The undercarriage was a nightmare of roaring steam, churning grease, and grinding iron. Above their heads, the boiler’s blow-off valves vented scalding steam with the ear-splitting roar of a clouded eye, scalding the snow around them into foul brown slush. The heat was huge. Radiant fire from the firebox above contrasting wildly with the sub-zero wind that whipped beneath the wheel sets.
Ren scrambled between the eight-foot steel drive wheels. His lambskin apron soaked up black gear grease and coal run-off. His head pounded. His cracked ribs flared with blinding agony every time he dragged his chest over an iron rail tie.
Ahead of them, forty paces along the line, the sound of iron striking iron began to echo above the roar of the steam.
CLANG. CLANG. CRACK.
Master Cole’s weavers had reached the high-pressure junction switch. Ren could see the shadows of thirty men swarming the switch-stand in the darkness, their heavy crowbars and cold chisels hammering into the toggle housing. They poured buckets of freezing animal fat into the slide plates to freeze the gearwork solid.
“The switch is jammed!” a voice screamed from the trackside shack. “Signal warden! The points are wedged open with cold iron!”
Inside the cab of Locomotive 808, the engineer panicked. Believing the station was under full military assault, the driver pulled the main steam throttle.
The steel drive wheels lost traction on the icy rails, spinning wildly with a shower of orange sparks that lit up the locomotive’s undercarriage in terrifying strobes. The huge machine shuddered, twenty tons of balance weights slamming against the frames as the tires bit into the sand-pipes.
With an ear-splitting groan of tortured steel, the Solstice Express began to roll.
“It’s moving!” Ren yelled, rolling sideways between the rails as a thirty-pound brake beam passed six inches above his skull. “Vane! The train is moving!”
“I have eyes, you idiot!” Vane shouted back from beneath the first passenger car bogie. His velvet frock coat was soaked in black metal tube oil. His face was smeared with soot, his silver mustache bristling with fury. “Get to Van Three! If the train clears the yard crossover, the points will tear the trucks off the rails!”
Ren scrambled on his belly along the ties. He clawed his way backward against the direction of the moving train.
Above him, the heavy iron floors of the passenger cars rumbled past. Inside, he could hear the royal hired blades shouting, the rhythmic clatter of boots running toward the entry halls, the chambering of heavy breach-loading carbines.
And then, Freight Van Three loomed overhead.
It was clear: an unbending undercarriage of heavy bridge-heavy beams. It was wrapped in three-inch thick lead sheeting designed to shield the outside from the ringing acoustics of the glass-like cargo within. Heavy copper refrigeration pipes ran along the sills, frosted with a thick crust of white rime.
Ren pulled himself up onto the rear truck assembly. He wrapped his left arm around the cold-rolled steel axle box. His feet dragged in the ballast, stones kicking against his heels as the carriage sped up to walking speed.
Above him, set directly between the passenger carriage and Freight Van Three, hung the huge high-pressure draw-gear. A three-inch forged-steel coupling pin held within an iron clevis. It was locked in place by a spring-loaded cotter.
“The pin!” Vane shouted, hauling himself onto the opposite side of the bogie, his blackthorn stick wedged behind an iron safety chain to keep from falling under the spinning wheels. “Ren, the acid! Now!”
Ren reached into his leather satchel with his teeth, biting through the red wax seal of the heavy clay vial.
He spat the wax aside, gripped the baked-clay bottle with his left hand, and hauled himself upward until his chest was pressed against the greasy, shaking-maddened iron of the draw-bar. He poured the entire contents of the vial into the grease-cup directly above the three-inch steel pin.
The ferric-acid solvent struck the hot grease with a violent, foaming hiss. A cloud of choking, yellowish-green fumes erupted into Ren’s face, burning his eyes and searing his nostrils with the stench of boiling chlorine.
Beneath the acid-burning bath, the crystal-clear structure of the royal cast steel began to pit and whiten, tiny fissures spreading across the shear line.
“It’s eating the casing!” Ren choked out, coughing wildly against the acid smoke.
“Now drive the awl!” Vane roared, his voice cracking with desperate fury. “Drive it into the grain, Ren! The train is hitting the crossover!”
Ren released the bottle, letting it shatter against the ballast below.
With his right hand, he drew the reforged mammoth bone awl from his apron sheath. The silver metal ring caught the strobing orange sparks from the locomotive’s slipping wheels.
Ren jammed the silver-wire tip directly into the foaming, acid-pitted stress fissure of the draw-pin.
He didn’t possess mana. He had no internal pool to fuel a spell. But he had ten years of careful rage, thirty-two stolen crowns, and the memory of Mira’s crystal-clear fingers touching his cheek.
He channeled his intent through the silver metal ring—not an elemental blast, but the unbending scribal command of a man who refuses to allow an unjust contract to stand:
DISSOLUTION OF TITLE. SEVERANCE OF TRANSIT.
The ivory awl shrieked.
A brilliant violet blast wave exploded from the silver sleeve, blinding in its intensity. The moving backing-up pressure from forty thousand foot-pounds of locomotive draw-bar tension slammed back through the tool. It traveled up Ren’s forearm directly into his shoulder.
His left collarbone cracked with a sickening snap. His grip slipped a fraction of an inch, the rough iron of the clevis tearing the flesh from his palm.
And then, the three-inch forged steel pin shattered.
The metal exploded like a shell casing, jagged shards of cast iron ricocheting off the belly of the freight car. The heavy high-pressure draw-gear snapped free with an ear-splitting BOOM, the cut safety chains whipping through the air like iron snakes.
Freight Van Three surged wildly, its forward driving force dying as it detached from the speeding up passenger carriages ahead.
Locomotive 808 roared into the dark, pulling the four front cars toward the jammed junction switch. Meanwhile, Freight Van Three and Lord Malakor’s Glass Pavilion rolled forward on their own driving force, coasting down the dark, snow-slick siding toward the freight platform.
Ren hung from the axle box, his left arm dangling uselessly, his breath coming in ragged, bloody sobs. The biting blizzard stung his torn palm. But beneath the agony of his broken collarbone, a savage, hungry fire ignited in his chest. Every muscle in his body trembled with the body toll of the burn. But his right hand held fast to the ivory metal pen.
Beside him, Vane hauled himself up onto the brake platform. It spat soot into the gale, his slate-grey eyes wide with manic triumph.
“The draw-bar is clear,” Vane hissed. He wiped grease from his brow with the shredded silk of his cuff. “The driving force will carry this boxcar four hundred yards before the friction clamps bite. Get your feet onto the runner, Ren. The wardens inside know the tension dropped.”
The umbilical had been cut. The front carriages were screaming down the main line into Cole’s barricade, while here in the dark, the real reckoning was about to begin.
Above them, the heavy iron deadbolt of the freight car began to ratchet from within.