‘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.’