The shelf space had been stocked with clothes for women as well as men. That had been the work of a team that Perry hadn’t consulted with, and they’d clearly tried to figure out from base principles what the full breadth of appropriate clothing would be for any woman that Perry happened to find himself with — which they might have thought was going to be Hella or Mette or Eggy.

  Instead, it was Anaksi, and because Perry didn’t want to show her the shelf space, he grabbed a dress and a slip that he vaguely thought would fit her, or not look too ugly if they didn’t, along with a pair of shoes and a broad hat.

  “Why am I wearing this?” she asked. She was still in the cell, though Perry had taken the keys the marshal had left behind and opened it.

  “To blend in,” said Perry. “You want to look like you’re not a Yuuk.”

  “Anyone can look at my face and see what I am,” said Anaksi. She looked over the dress and the slip. “I don’t even know how to wear this.”

  “Well … figure it out,” said Perry. “We’re going to hide out in my room until the train gets here, then we’re going to spend as little time as possible getting on. We’ll have a private room that no one will come into. I’m pretty sure your face isn’t known to anyone but the marshal, since no one made a big thing of it when we came into town, but I want you looking like you’re assimilated.”

  “I don’t know that word,” said Anaksi.

  “Like you’re a Yuuk that has adopted and lived in the culture of the settlers,” said Perry.

  Anaksi grimaced. “Fine.”

  “I’d give you some privacy,” said Perry. “But this is the plan. When we get to Charlonion, you’ll guide me to where you think Queenie was going to go, and we’ll figure out what the hell she did to your people, then hopefully reverse it and stop her from doing anything worse.”

  ~~~~

  A day later, they were on the train, sitting in a private room. They got some looks, but not as many as Perry had feared they would, in part because Anaksi had taken the disguise seriously. She’d put her hair into braids like the settler women wore, hid her face beneath the hat, and had changed something in her affect, holding herself a bit more prim and proper. She was still obviously a Yuuk in terms of her features, and a little less obviously in terms of her skin color, but that was only enough for her to get noticed and dismissed.

  Perry rubbed his hands on his pants as he waited in the private car for the train to start moving again. He’d changed his remaining scrip in for thin gold coins, which would apparently be accepted almost everywhere, and stashed Marchand in the shelf space, as well as the sword that he’d retrieved from the basement of city hall. His goodbyes had been brief, and he’d promised that he would return, though he wasn’t sure that was true.

  “We should have gone to find the rest of the tribe,” said Anaksi. Her hands were folded in her lap.

  “They might have had information, yeah,” said Perry.

  “It was the men who attacked,” said Anaksi. “Twenty, thirty? There were women and children left behind. With the scorn they showed to me, what might they have shown to the others?”

  “You’re worried about them,” said Perry. “I get that. If we leave and set out now, we can go get them, then … I don’t know. We’re probably already behind Queenie, if she’s traveling on horseback. I can, in theory, go faster than a horse, but you’ve said that the train creates a wake that would slow us down considerably.”

  “You would abandon this quest to check on my people?” asked Anaksi.

  “Yes,” said Perry. “Not eagerly, but yes. And there’s a chance we could learn something from speaking to them, some clue as to what Queenie did to them. We want to know why she was with them when they attacked.”

  “They were never going to attack,” said Anaksi.

  “No?” asked Perry. “You said that they would.”

  “I lied,” said Anaksi. “You saw how few there were to attack the train? That was our best chance. Six people, that was as much will as there was for that plan. Attacking the town was always going to end poorly.”

  “Not many of your people actually died,” said Perry. “A lot more of the settlers did.”

  “Fewer would have died if you’d stayed your sword,” said Anaksi, glaring at him.

  “They were bulletproof,” said Perry. “Do you know how that was done?”

  “No,” said Anaksi. “But our tribe isn’t large. Five dead wouldn’t be worth twenty of yours.”

  Perry looked out the window. It seemed like they were getting underway, and he could hear the hum of the train’s engine growing louder. “I’m sorry.”

  “Mmm,” said Anaksi. “Idiot man is sorry for where his weapon falls, as though it was an accident.” She said this in her own language, under her breath.

  “Seems to me like it was always headed for tragedy,” said Perry. “If you had stolen the harmonizer from the train, Queenie would have come after you, and I’m guessing she’d have killed or turned you, or whatever it was she did. Not that I don’t take responsibility for the deaths, but … I don’t know.”

  “We don’t need to talk about this,” said Anaksi.

  Perry nodded and disengaged. He wished that he had Marchand to talk to, but he would need a chance to open the shelf space a crack for that. At least Marchand was functional now, and could start working on mathematical models of the Flux, as well as cataloging and transcribing of every conversation in the saloon the night before. Perry, for his part, looked out the window.

  The train finally started moving, and Perry was surprised to see what passed by.

  “It’s so green,” he said as he looked out the window.

  “Verdant Moon,” said Anaksi.

  “Alright,” said Perry. “Explain the Verdant Moon to me.”

  Anaksi narrowed her eyes at him. “You want the ignorant Yuuk to explain the moon?”

  “Forget it then,” said Perry. “Just making conversation.”

  He returned to gazing out at the scenery. You could almost be fooled into thinking that it was bucolic. They were still in settled land close to the town, and Perry could see fields protected by barbed wire. The grass was tall and lush, and a herd of cows was doing their best to mow it down. He’d seen some of it from the town, but it was more obvious passing it by.

  “The Verdant Moon makes things grow,” said Anaksi. Perry turned to her. She was watching him. “Three months of growth, overnight, more for larger plants with leaves spread to catch the moonlight.”

  “It’s a boon then,” said Perry.

  “No,” said Anaksi. “Three months is too much. At the wrong time, plants can go to seed, or weeds can sprout up.”

  “Even with the pannat?” asked Perry.

  “Not the pannat,” said Anaksi. “But the settler farms aren’t arranged in the same way. They have strict boundaries, and attempt to keep everything pinned. So the Verdant Moon comes, and when it does, the field goes to seed, or the weeds take over, and only if the timing is right does a crop become ready for harvest all at once.”

  “Huh,” said Perry. “And the cattle are fine? The chickens?”

  “No animal risks moonlight,” said Anaksi. She gave him a curious look again. “You’re from Charlonion. They don’t know these things there?”

  “I never studied it,” said Perry. “I’m just curious.”

  “Only curious now?” asked Anaksi.

  “Basically,” answered Perry. “I’m interested in agriculture and how it’s practiced, both by the Eshkee and the other Yuuks and the settlers.”

  “Do you hope to become a farmer one day?” asked Anaksi.

  “I like knowledge for the sake of knowledge,” said Perry. “I like understanding how the world works. I like hearing stories, and deciding for myself whether they’re true.” It helped the knowledge tether too, though it was hard to say how much. The notebook that Perry had been filling since coming to the Dusklands was doing something, but maybe something that was indistinguishable from placebo. He had it on his lap, and opened it to jot down a few notes about the moon.

  Knowing more would also possibly prevent him from getting shot in the face by a Commission agent.

  Anaksi looked out the window, and for a long time, didn’t say anything, so Perry did likewise. The train ride would take as long as it had to, with two stops along the way, and moving at night was apparently so dangerous that there was a chance they would stay overnight if it looked like they might not make Charlonion by nightfall.

  The Verdant Moon had made everything lush and green, without any apparent need for sunlight or rainfall, though Perry couldn’t imagine that it would last. The insects and herbivores would eat up everything, and he could imagine that was a pain point further down the line, though perhaps the fauna were adapted to the Verdant Moon and all other phenomena.

  The track was only mostly straight, but the bends in it were gentle. It carved its way through mountains, occasionally plunging them into darkness when they’d go through a tunnel, and then sometimes they’d go across a bridge over a chasm — sometimes with no bottom, but usually with a river down there, winding its way through the Flux. Everywhere, it was green, the prairies grown tall, the deserts thick with life. There was more variety to the scenery than the real Wild West had ever had, all too close together and interspersed. And it was a pleasant ride, overall, once Perry had gotten used to the droning of the engine. The air was pure and clean, occasionally tasting slightly sweet in a way that was hard to identify. The sky was a familiar blue, and it was bright out, but there was no sun, which was unnerving. Perry could trace shadows and point out where the sun should be, it simply wasn’t there in the sky.

  “My husband was a rat bastard,” said Anaksi. She was looking out the window as she said it. “He was cruel, violent, manipulative.”

  Perry waited for more, but she turned to him and raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know your customs,” he said. “Sometimes people fall in love and find out only later that they married the wrong person. Sometimes people are forced into marriage. Sometimes circumstances conspire to make the marriage happen, even if there are … downsides.”

  Anaksi turned back to the window. “You didn’t know him. You heard only his broken Commish. But he was a good speaker, charismatic, a leader of not just the tribe, but someone who could broker peace with the other tribes. He was on his way to uniting the Eshkee, and once we were united, he would have the strength to go speak with the others.”

  “And also a rat bastard?” asked Perry.

  Anaksi nodded. “His father had died when he was young. His mother was killed by a marshal for stealing food when he was a teenager. He had seen his tribe wither and die, and his heart was filled with hate. He wanted to destroy the Commission, to kill every settler across the whole of the Dusklands, and to burn Charlonion to the ground. And he wanted to be the tip of the spear, the golden warrior, a man standing at the summit of the world. When he got his way, he was generous and gleeful. When times turned sour, he would lash out and blame others. That was when he was most violent, after a loss or a setback, or when he’d indulged himself in whiskey.”

  “Sounds awful,” Perry ventured.

  “You need awful people sometimes,” said Anaksi. “Awful people for awful purpose.”

  Perry looked her over. She felt different, in the clothes he’d picked out for her. Less foreign, he supposed that was part of it, but also like she’d shed a part of herself.

  “You married him for that awful purpose?” asked Perry.

  “I had hoped to temper him,” said Anaksi. “I had hoped that I would help to balance his urges, to refine his will.”

  Perry looked back out at the scenery. He had no idea what to say to that, or what questions to ask. He wanted to know how it felt, watching that future slip away, how she’d handled it when he’d hit her — he was pretty sure that was implied. He didn’t know her, not really, but she surely had her own story, her own hatred, her own will, and that was why she’d married this awful man.

  “And now he’s dead, and all those plans have gone up in smoke,” said Perry.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “I hate you for it,” said Anaksi. “I would have killed you in your sleep, that first night, if you had slept.” The frown that graced her face was a gentle one. “But I also felt relief. The knowledge that I would never have to hear his outbursts, to act as the vessel for his hatred so I could pour it out somewhere safe. I wouldn’t need to massage his moods, to redirect his furor. It was such a feeling of peace and calm, to have him dead. You lifted a weight from my shoulders.”

  “That’s a complicated feeling,” said Perry.

  “I had time to think as you marched me along the train tracks,” said Anaksi. “Then more time to think as I sat in the jail cell you placed me in. And I suppose, since you won’t leave my side, that I’ll keep having time to think.”

  “I could help educate you,” said Perry.

  She looked at him for a moment, then laughed. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, you still have goals, don’t you?” asked Perry. “I know things. Things that could help you. You want to organize, to have a coherent identity among the Yuuks, to have political power, to be able to oppose the Commission’s expansion.”

  “And you would help with that?” asked Anaksi. She let out a small laugh. “Why?”

  “I think the Yuuks have a right to self-governance, self-determination, defense of your way of life,” said Perry. “I don’t know what that would look like in practice. I don’t know how much the Commission is actively trying to wipe you out, and how much they’d be amenable to some kind of treaty.”

  “There have been treaties,” said Anaksi.

  “Right,” said Perry with a sigh. “Treaties written with a tacit understanding that they wouldn’t be honored, treaties that they couldn’t enforce even if they wanted to because the settlers are going out on their own, treaties that have giant loopholes and issues of interpretation.”

  “You understand,” said Anaksi. “Many of your people don’t.”

  “I’m just saying … we have time on this train, and with luck, we’ll have time later, and I want you to understand that,” he paused. “That I’m a good guy here. That I’m on your side.”

  Anaksi rolled her eyes. “I’ve heard all that before.”

  “Have you?” asked Perry.

  “There are people who felt a duty to civilize me,” said Anaksi. She gave him a hard stare.

  “Fine,” said Perry, holding up a hand. He sat back and looked out over the Flux as it passed. His book was closed and set down beside him. “We’ll go find Queenie, we’ll figure out what she’s up to, and we’ll have her undo whatever she’s done. And in the end, I’ll get the harmonizer back, and return it to Grabler’s Gulch, and you’ll at least have your people, if they’re even still with her.”

  “I do take your willingness to help seriously,” said Anaksi. “But I look at it with suspicion. It’s something we’ve learned, over time.” She leaned forward slightly. “It does provide me some comfort, if only for one reason.”

  “What’s that?” asked Perry, turning back to her.

  “You’re not Commission,” said Anaksi. “They would never make such an offer.”

  ~~~~

  They talked more in the train, and Perry got a better overview of the long history of the Dusklands, which he was sorely in need of.

  Charlonion had just appeared one day, more than a thousand years ago, fully formed, but for three hundred years it stood completely abandoned. Then, people began to flood in from somewhere else, the Old World, a place that was difficult to return to, though not impossible. There was a period when it seemed that they would stay in the city somehow, but eventually they started to spread out, and it was only within the last generation that their efforts to penetrate into the Flux were bearing fruit, namely because of the rail lines.

  There had been rail lines before, plenty of them, built with back-breaking labor by people who were forced into the work, but before the train tracks could be laid down for good, there needed to be men running up and down the lines almost constantly, looking for defects and sabotage, and the trains needed to creep along at a snail’s pace, forever worried that they’d be derailed or come to a length that was missing.

  All prior expansion had been prelude to what was happening now, and had been happening for the last forty-some years. And Charlonion was undergoing a renaissance, advancing by what seemed like leaps and bounds, with all kinds of madness emanating from the great hulking city.

  The train pulled to a stop at Taryton, and Perry got up to stretch his legs.

  “We should have fifteen minutes,” said Perry. “There’s not any heat on us, and there will be people getting off and on.”

  “I’m staying here,” said Anaksi.

  Perry looked at her. “Alright. And … just here?”

  “You’re worried that I’ll run,” said Anaksi. “I won’t. I mean to find this woman, and to understand what she did with my people, and stop her.”

  Perry nodded. “And you’re not worried about being accosted?”

  “The shade will be drawn,” said Anaksi. “No one should come to look, aside from the ticket taker, and he’d seen me already. And I can handle myself, if it comes down to it.”

  “Do you want anything?” asked Perry. “Something to eat?”

  “No,” said Anaksi. She hesitated slightly. “Thank you.”

  Taryton was not, it turned out, all that much bigger than Grabler’s Gulch. There were a few more buildings that had been constructed from quarried stone, and they had their own large city hall, but the train hadn’t pulled into a thicket of buildings, it had pulled alongside a busy main street and the lesser streets around it.

  A sign at the train station noted that this was a town of austerity, which according to further clarification meant no alcohol, smoking, or fornication allowed. Perry found that curious, but not overly slow, and it did explain a bit of the open prostitution at Cleo’s saloon; this was a comparative advantage, of a sort.

  The men who worked the train were refilling the large tank behind the engine with a thick syrup, and Perry smelled a vegetal sweetness in the air from it. He was half-tempted to go see what this was — no one had explained the droning of the trains to him yet, but it certainly wasn’t running on steam. He couldn’t fathom why they’d be feeding the engine high fructose corn syrup, yet that was his best guess about what was going on.

  Perry went to a shop half a block from the train station, and ducked inside to have a look around. He was mildly surprised to see that there were off-the-rack clothes, mostly work uniforms, and he picked up two of the largest pairs of pants, two shirts, and a small handful of other things that would help sell him as a worker of some kind. He’d been trying to keep second sphere from sprucing him up too much, but his teeth were even and white and his skin was clear, which was enough to mark him out as different.

  With a gunny sack and an assortment of goods acquired, including a bit of food, he left and went back to the train, only to be stopped, on his way, by a man in a white robe.

  “You need to be bathed in light, sir,” said the man. He was missing a few of his back teeth, all in a row, obvious when he opened his mouth to speak, and while great care had been made to preserve the white of his robes, his overall appearance was disheveled.

  “Excuse me,” said Perry, trying to step past the man, but the man moved to block Perry’s path.

  “A bathing in light, I can see the stains on your soul, you’re a gambler, a rake, that’s clear enough, but a bath in light —”

  Perry looked at the train. It wasn’t moving yet, and he had time, but this was annoying him. He didn’t understand their sun-based religion, and certainly didn’t respect it. Anaksi hadn’t said anything about it, but he was assuming that it was a knock-off of Christianity.

  “Get the fuck out of my way,” said Perry.

  “You would speak that way to a holy man?” asked the man, clutching his robes at the center of his chest. “You would blaspheme against a chosen prophet of the sun’s terrible light?”

  Perry looked up at the sky. There was absolutely no sun anywhere to be seen. It was still as blue as a regular sky, and the shadows were all behaving as he would have expected them to.

  “Don’t be fooled by the sky of the deceiver,” said the man. “Come, be cleansed! I smell the wolf on you!”

  That did give Perry pause, but he could hear the rising droning of the train engine, and the tank of syrup was being sealed. He pushed past the priest or prophet, and ignored the yelling behind him, getting on the train just in time so that when he got back to his train car, the train had started moving again.

  Anaksi was still sitting right where he’d left her.

  “Any trouble?” Perry asked.

  “None,” said Anaksi. “No one came to look in. If you pretend to be one of them, that’s usually good enough. I wouldn’t worry.”

  “And you did not, in fact, run off,” said Perry.

  “No,” said Anaksi. She nodded at the book that Perry had left sitting on his seat. “I did read some of your observations.”

  “And?” asked Perry.

  “The things you note are strange,” said Anaksi. “There are question marks placed next to things that even a scholar should have known, and I know that’s not what you actually are.”

  “I didn’t know that you would snoop,” said Perry. “And in my defense, I didn’t know you were literate.”

  “Most of my people aren’t,” said Anaksi. “There’s no need for us to be — or, I suppose, there wasn’t a need. And now, because we have no system of writing, it’s difficult to switch over. There are attempts.” She was watching Perry. “I know nothing about you, and you now know everything about me.”

  “Right,” said Perry. “Which is how I would prefer it. Explaining my whole deal would take hours, and —”

  “We’re on a train that will take hours to get to the next city,” said Anaksi. “But you people treat stories like precious gems not to be shared with anyone, or like weapons to be deployed at the right moment.”

  “It’s not that,” said Perry. “It’s just long, involved, and would get me strung up if you told anyone. I trust you, but I don’t trust you that much.”

  “You defected from the Commission,” said Anaksi with a knowing nod.

  “No,” said Perry. “But the Commission would have an interest in me. They’d have several interests in me. And I’m not sure that I would be able to fight them off, especially once we get to Charlonion, which from what I’ve heard is the seat of their power.”

  “You’ve never been to Charlonion then,” said Anaksi. This brought a frown to her face. “I’m … more familiar with the city than you are?”

  “Yes,” said Perry. “Which is why I need a guide. Queenie is going to be in there?”

  “If she and the woman who came to our tribe are the same person, yes,” said Anaksi. “The scarf was distinctive. The things she talked about … I don’t know. Yes, almost certainly it’s her, or at least someone who works for her.”

  “We’re going a hell of a long way on just that small scrap of information, this is true,” said Perry. It was mostly because of the train schedule that they’d left when they did. Grabler’s Gulch would be waiting weeks for another train. “And you haven’t told me what she actually said, or what direction she pointed you.”

  “If I tell you, you would leave me,” said Anaksi. “I can see in your eyes that you don’t want to be saddled with me. I know where my value lies.”

  “I could move faster on my own,” said Perry. “I could fly faster than this train, for example.” With the power armor on, he could probably lap the train. “But even if that’s true, I still need a guide, someone who understands both the Yuuks and the settlers and the people in the city.”

  “Because you’re not one of us,” said Anaksi. “But you’re not a new angel either, and you’re not a demon, but you think the Commission would kill you if they knew your true nature.”

  “You’re too curious about this,” said Perry. “Drop it. The only person I’m dangerous to is Queenie, and anyone who gets in my way, okay?”

  “You won’t trade me a scrap of information for what I’ve told you?” asked Anaksi. “The story of a person’s life is not something to be earned, but haven’t I earned something?”

  Perry considered that. “I suppose,” he said. “Fine. I was a scholar, where I came from, the kind of person who sits and learns for a great many years before actually doing anything, and the things that I would have done, if I hadn’t become a warrior, were complicated and specialized, divorced from the experience of anyone else.”

  “But not a scholar in the city?” asked Anaksi. “You were a scholar … somewhere beyond?”

  “Yes,” said Perry.

  “And how did you become a warrior?” asked Anaksi.

  She was pushing him, and he thought that was probably fair. He hadn’t stuck to a cover story, because making a cover story that would hold up to scrutiny was beyond his power given how vanishingly little he knew. Asking questions was what any sane person would do, if they thought they had leeway, especially if they were trapped on a train together.

  “I was called by a higher power,” said Perry. “It took time before I understood what was expected from me, and once I did understand, there was a purpose and clarity to it that I had never known before. I didn’t tell you how it went with Queenie, but she thrashed me, shot me several times, outran me, proved her skill and went off into the night. But at the same time, it was … cathartic, I guess. There was purpose to it. Whatever it is she’s trying to do, I’m here to stop it, and if she’s moved against your people, if she’s done some mind control thing, then I’m here to stop it.”

  “But … you don’t know?” asked Anaksi. “You have no more information than I do?”

  “A bit more,” said Perry. “And because you won’t tell me where she’s going, a bit less.”

  “She’s like you, not from the city,” said Anaksi.

  Perry nodded. “And like me, she has powers that make her fearsome. I didn’t so much as land a hit on her, but I would be surprised if a bullet to the brain took her out. And though she ran, we’re tied up together, which she’s almost certainly aware of. One of the reasons I think this isn’t a wild goose chase is that conflict is inevitable.”

  Anaksi frowned and looked out the window. “The train is slowing,” she said.

  She was right. Perry had felt it, but somehow had thought that they were arriving at their next stop, Cenneral, early. There was no sign of a town though, and when Perry looked down the tracks, he could see nothing but more prairie. The stop felt like it might have been for an obstruction or other kind of problem, but that was guesswork.

  “Please tell me this isn’t a train robbery,” said Perry.

  “They’re less likely to succeed if you stop the train,” said Anaksi. “A barrier gives people time to prepare and fight back. If it’s a robbery, they’ll come by and ask for our valuables, unless there’s a shootout. No one wants that.”

  “It’s common?” asked Perry.

  “No,” said Anaksi. “People are armed on the trains.” She frowned and went to the window, making sure that it opened, but she left it shut. “We aren’t in danger, even if it is a train robbery.”

  At around that time, Perry saw a man on horseback coming alongside the train. He was dressed in a blue uniform with a broad hat leaving him in shadow, and shiny black boots that had clearly been recently polished. He was looking along the length of the train, and a rifle was laid in front of him, ready to raise and fire, though his hands were on the reins. His eyes were glowing golden, but in the sunlight — or lack of sunlight, the general brightness that only came from somewhere by implication — it wasn’t too impressive.

  “That doesn’t look like a robber to me,” said Perry.

  Anaksi turned to look out the window, then flattened herself back against her seat, letting out a hiss.

  “Commission Inspector,” she said.

  “Okay?” asked Perry.

  “It’s an inspection,” said Anaksi.

  “Okay?” Perry asked again. “You know that I slapped the marshal around, right? That I don’t take these people seriously?”

  “You should take them seriously,” said Anaksi. “The marshal is responsible for the application of the law, but the Inspectors are responsible for protecting Charlonion. Which of those do you think the ghouls put more effort toward?”

  “Ah,” said Perry. He rubbed his chin and regarded the man on horseback. “So I should be worried then?”

  Anaksi stared at him. “They’ll look into your very mind. And if they find what you expect them to find, they’ll make every effort to take you in.”

  “Ah,” said Perry. “You know, that would have been a helpful thing for you to tell me earlier.”

  “This is the sort of thing you should know,” Anaksi hissed. She glanced out the window again, then flattened herself in place again. “Except you’re not from here, so this possibility completely escaped you. This was not something you had a plan for. It’s a surprise, isn’t it?” She seemed horrified by the idea. “You don’t even know what they can do.”

  “Alright, listen,” said Perry. “You’re going to spend the next few minutes explaining things to me, and then we’ll get out of this situation the same way I get out of every situation: we’re going to wing it.”

  Sadly, it was true that humor often failed to transcend cultural barriers.