The Three Most Wanted (23 page)

“I’ll be as quick as I can.” Bane leapt across the gap to the flatcar I’d just come from, but a muttered curse told me that the door there was also locked. He crossed back and scaled the container I was sitting against as easily as climbing a ladder. I stifled a twinge of envy.

He was a long time, not that it mattered. I was just glad to sit still and hold Jon. How would we get Jon into one of the other containers, anyway?

The clackety-clack and the motion of the train brought back those summer holidays when Bane and I jumped trains every day… riding through the Fellest and up to the passes, feeling like anything was possible. Happy times.

The lash of the rain on my face soon brought me back to the present—but the knowledge that every passing minute put more miles between us and the searching soldiers made this an even happier time.

It was clear as soon as he plunked down beside me that Bane didn’t share my high spirits: he was hopping mad again. “If your almighty Friend really did send this train, Margo,” he hissed, “I don’t think much of His forward planning!”

“What’s
wrong?”
I spoke as calmly as I could after the last twenty-four hours.

“It’s a weapons’ train, Margo! Code-locked containers, every one. Guards on the front and back of the train—they didn’t see us get on, small mercies! There’s an extra engine at the rear so it doesn’t slow to a dangerous speed up inclines!”

Yes, the Resistance would love to get their hands on a train like this. Two engines. I stared at the shadowy ground rushing past. No way we should’ve been able to get on at all, let alone in our condition…

“And there’s no way,” he went on—very quiet now, “there’s no way it’s going to stop anywhere where it’ll be safe to get off. We can’t get into a container so as soon as the sun comes up we’ll be seen. And we’ll be caught. Say thanks from me to your Friend, will you!”

The train would speed through green lights all the way until it drew to a halt inside a military compound.

But still… “Calm down, Bane! We’re not caught yet, are we? So stop whining! Where’s it going, anyway?”

“Manifests on the container doors say Rome.”

“Rome!”

“Caught at day-break,
remember?”

“Yes, but…” Tantalizing that the train was going exactly where we wanted. “Sure there isn’t anywhere we can hide?”

“Why d’you think I’ve been so long? I’ve been from one end of this train to the other, just as close to the guards as I dared—we’re almost at the back, here. The containers are all locked. We’re too weak to cling underneath, nor have we anything to tie ourselves on with—we’d probably get electrocuted, anyway.”

“The container roofs?”

“In full sight of the guards, when there’s light to see by. Just face it, we’re done for.”

“We’re less done for than we were half an hour ago! Since when have you been so negative!” Oh... I reached out to touch his forehead. Burning. Of course. He shrugged me away, but my anger died. “Come on, it’s still some time before morning, isn’t it? Why don’t you try and get some rest?”

“I’m not tired.”

“Fibber.”

Shivering violently now in my poorly-fastened blouse, I turned to Jon again. His skin was cold under my hands, his clothes as wet as mine. He was totally and frighteningly unresponsive. I shifted until I could lie between him and the cold metal of the container as human insulation.

“Come on, Bane, please lie down and try to keep Jon warm. He’s not in a good way.”

Bane didn’t speak, as though becoming aware he was playing the bear with the cut paw. He shifted until he could lie down and, reaching over Jon and I, hold onto a bar to keep us all aboard.

For all Bane’s fears and worries, my eyes wouldn’t stay open. We were safer than we’d been half an hour ago and that was that. This train was bound for Rome. Who knew how many towns it’d actually go through? Who knew who’d actually look closely at yet another train?

I wrapped my arms around Jon’s chilled body in a hopeless attempt to give heat, as the cold rain hammered down...

...Sunlight was blazing through my eyelids. Turning away and opening my eyes, I found myself looking into Bane’s deep sunken, dark circled, fever-bright eyes. My mouth was parched—I attempted to moisten it before speaking. “What time is it?”

“Ten o’clock.”

“When’s this thing supposed to reach Rome?”

“Some hours yet, Margo.” He took one hand away from the bar, flexing it and wincing, took out his phone and consulted the map. “We’re close to Milan.” He put the phone away and returned to his job as safety rail.

Milan. It penetrated slowly. “We’re over the Alps!”

He smiled crookedly. “Yes, we are over the Alps.”

His tone was dry, but his mood had improved. It must’ve been light for some hours, and we’d not been caught yet. We couldn’t be very conspicuous, lying down like this. We probably looked like old sacks, or something. I licked my lips again. Would we reach Rome before we were spotted? We’d travelled a long way south as I slept.

I turned my attention to Jon. Unconscious. His face a pasty gray color. His skin, despite his sun-dried clothes, still clammy. “He needs a doctor.”

Bane grimaced. What was there to say? Jon needed a doctor. He couldn’t have one. He’d probably die.

I stroked his autumny hair gently back from his face. “Come on, Jon. Stick with us. We’re on the express to Rome, lots of doctors in Rome. Just hang in there…”

He couldn’t hear me.
Lord, watch over him, please, please, please?

I touched Bane’s forehead instead. Could’ve fried an egg on it. If I had one. Shouldn’t have thought about eggs. My stomach was gnawing my backbone in half. From the look of Bane’s face, he needed a doctor too. Perhaps wouldn’t die without one—not quite yet, anyway...

“Truthfully, Bane, how are you fee…”

A flash of light reflected off the container above—the next second the sound slammed into us, like the fireworks all over again. The entire train jerked and hurtled sideways. In a strange slow motion the locomotive tumbled past us as though through midair, flying end over end… everything dissolved into a maelstrom of tilting, rolling flatcars and spinning ground…

Blackness.

***+***

19

DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES

Shouts from across the tracks. Soldiers calling to one another. Dogs barking. And from behind. Even the wind couldn’t drown them out. How far away? As little as a few hundred meters? They couldn’t see us yet, for the trees, but we could see their lights… They were coming.

“I love you…”

“I love you too.” I kissed Bane, my arms wrapping around his hot, bare back, and tasted salt on my lips. He was crying.

“Love you, Margo. Love you forever…” He clutched me to him with only his left arm, now.

I kissed him, just kissed him, didn’t want to think, couldn’t think about anything else.
I love you, Bane
…

My eyes opened in the vain hope I might see his face, but the darkness was too great. Save those winking lights, so close. Almost here…

“Love you…” His voice shook… broke… he drew such a deep breath his body shuddered with it
—
his right arm moved unseen beside me, hard and fast.

A sharp pain pierced my side; a coldness touched my heart. Bane’s arms were both around me again, holding me, what’d happened to my legs? I couldn’t even feel them. Bane lowered me to the ground, cradling me to him, kissed me again and again. “Love you, Margo, love you, love you…”

The blackness was getting blacker. Even my lips were going numb.

“Love you, Bane,” I whispered, ‘cause it seemed very important I say it, one more time.

His tears filling my mouth and his lips on mine were the last thing I felt as darkness swallowed me…

...Light, beyond my eyelids. I dragged them open, crackling with sleepy dust. A plaster ceiling, sort of amber stucco.

Bane’s face suddenly blocked it from view. “Margo?”

“Umm...”

“Your Friend is an idiot! No, y’know…” He sprang off the bed and paced the small, sparsely furnished room. “I don’t even believe in Him! It was all coincidence, all of it. I mean, why the hell put us on a weapons train about to be blown up by the Resistance? Why?”

I struggled to kick my floundering mind into gear. Bane’s face was flushed more with anger than fever, so he’d found some more antibiotics. His right arm rested in a sling and he kept moving it to gesticulate then wincing—apart from that he looked remarkably well.

“I assume since you’re yelling at me I’m quite all right?” I managed at last.

He sat on the bed again, bent to kiss me. “Don’t wave your left arm around.” I looked down to find it too, lay in a sling. “It’s sprained or slightly fractured: the doctor didn’t have access to x-ray.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, this is just sprained.” He jerked his head down towards the sling. Of course, he must’ve held us all on the car just long enough that we didn’t fall to the ground in its path and get crushed... or something.

“
Jon?”
I struggled up into a sitting position.

“Fine.” Bane flipped his left hand. “Well, I say
fine
. He got off more lightly than any of us in the derailment but of course he was so much worse beforehand. But he should pull through, says
il dottore
.”

I let out the breath I was holding. Jon okay.
Deo gratias.
“So, where are we? The Resistance blew up the train, you said?”

“Yes, this is one of their safe houses near Milan.”

“Have you asked them yet if they’ll help us get to Rome?”

“I thought you didn’t want to accept any more help from them?”

“Well, if a big enough, fast enough moving hint clackety-clacks up to me and dumps me in their lap, I’m capable of taking it. So will they help us?”

Bane rolled his eyes. “Yes. Luciano says he’ll take us all the way to Rome, easy-peasy, then we can use one of the Rome Resistance’s tunnels into Vatican State.”

Many of the secret tunnels dated from the Great Wars or earlier and remained in the possession of families with ancestors in the Resistance movements of those earlier times. One of the few things for which the Underground actually had dealings with the Resistance. Difficult and dangerous enough to gain access to the blockaded Free State—no one was turned away just because they came through a Resistance tunnel instead of an Underground one.

Father Mark had given Bane the most up-to-date procedure he had for contacting the Rome Underground when we left, but we’d always known it’d probably be out of date by the time we got there. To be put straight in contact with the Rome Resistance would be—probably was—a God send.

“So, Bane.” I smiled at him. “Why
do
you think we were put on a train about to be blown up by the Resistance?”

He sprang off the bed as though he’d received a slap, not a smile. “Oh, shut up!” He strode to the door. “Why don’t you get some more sleep?”

But he didn’t leave. Just stood, staring at me, nostrils quivering. Upset about something much more than the fact that the—previous?—night’s string of life-saving “coincidences” was dancing a jig on his determined irresolution about certain matters.

Turning his face away, he drew in several deep breaths, then with a gulp, rushed across the room and flung himself on me. He managed to miss my possibly-fractured limb and I rubbed his back with my uninjured arm as his shoulders began to shake.

“Bane, it’s okay, shss, it’s okay. What’s wrong, Bane? Come on, everything’s okay now, isn’t it?”

“Okay?” he gulped, his head buried against my chest. I could feel his hot tears soaking through whatever I was wearing. “
Okay?
I almost… I almost had to… Back then… by the tracks… I almost…
Okay?”
He went back to crying harder than I’d seen him do for years and years and years.

I hugged him as tightly as I could with one arm and gave up talking. He’d been having similar dreams to me. Nightmares.

“Hush, hush,” I murmured at last. “I’d probably have stopped you, anyway. I hope I would’ve.”

“Well, I don’t hope you would’ve, you lunatic!” he managed a watery snarl. “Not if the train hadn’t come.”

“Oh, you
like
the train now, do you?”

He was silent for a moment, sniffing slightly. “It had its good points.” He nestled his head against my chest.

I let him nestle for a while, until his sniffs petered out and his expression began to suggest he was getting more enjoyment than comfort from his pillow—then prodded him.

“Off—come on, don’t just smirk at me.”

He made do with shifting his head to my shoulder and kissing my neck. “My beautiful Margo. I’m really starting to look forward to getting to Rome.”

“How long have we been asleep?”

“Well over twenty-four hours. Jon’s still out.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“No. He looks like death warmed up.”

“Did we have to go in separate rooms? I don’t like us being split up.”

Bane grimaced. “Nor do I, but I made a few tentative probings on that subject and it immediately became clear they’d be offended if I tried to change it. Think we didn’t trust them.”

“I
don’t
trust them.”

He gave a slight laugh. “Neither do I. All the more reason not to offend them, huh?”

“I s’pose.” But I didn’t like it. Felt very unsafe for the three of us to be separated. The pack mentality talking? Or perhaps common sense.

Footsteps outside. Bane sat up and swiped a sleeve across his face, removing salt from his cheeks and breaking up clumped eyelashes. His eyes were pretty much normal color again.

A tap on the door and in came a tall young man about Father Mark’s age; dark hair, swarthy skin, looked very Italian. A—brother and sister, surely?—followed him; they shared his Italian looks and were a similar age, perhaps a little younger. Two even younger men, one no older than us, peered in behind them.

“Thought I’d find you here.” The first man spoke to Bane in Esperanto. “And Margaret Verrall, you’ve joined us in the land of the waking.”

“Yes, I have. Thank you for taking care of us.”

“We did
cause
some of your injuries when we deprived you of your transport in such a surprising fashion.”

“Not half as surprising as our little find,” said the young woman dryly.

“Uh, that’s Carla,” said Bane. “Her brother, Francesco, and Luciano, leader of the Milan cell. I’ve not met the other two...”

“Hello,” I said.

They all nodded in return, and the younger of the other two piped up, “I’m Lanzo, that’s Ruggiero.” He looked like he might say more but Luciano silenced him with a wave of his hand.

“So you want to go to Rome?”

“Yes. If you could help us, that’d be great.”

“
Si
, it is a very simple matter. We travel to Rome without passing through road blocks all the time. The Rome cell will have you under those ancient walls in less time than it takes to say
Viva l’Italia
. We are happy to help you.”

“Really?” I couldn’t help it, it popped out. Generally the Resistance viewed the Underground with scorn if not outright hostility. The disgust was reciprocated; we did tend to preach at them rather.

Luciano smiled at my frank disbelief as Lanzo and Ruggiero sniggered. “You have caused a great deal of trouble for the EuroGov, Margaret Verrall. I’ll wager if you live, you’ll cause a whole lot more. On this we are allies.”

Carla sniffed pointedly.

Luciano grinned. “Carla is a little less happy with you.”

“Oh? Why?”

Carla glared at me. “Our mission is to restore sovereignty to our glorious nation but since your book came out all anyone anywhere wants to talk about is Sorting and Religious Suppression. Which are pretty low on our list of grievances. Or
were
.”

I snorted. “
Your
glorious nation wasn’t a nation at all until the beginning of the twentieth century.”

Bane elbowed me.
“Margo.”

Luciano ignored my less than tactful remark. “Trouble for the EuroGov aids our cause, Carla. Any trouble of any kind. You don’t have to like them, but you must be able to see their actions are benefiting us.”

Carla’s mouth twisted, but she nodded.

“I’ll take you up to Rome myself as soon as Jonathan is fit to travel,” said Luciano. “In the meantime, please do not leave this building for any reason. It won’t be a safe house for long if Margaret Verrall and Bane Marsden are seen sauntering around outside.” He strode to the door, graceful as a lanky cat—glanced back. “Oh, if you are well enough to get up, do join us for dinner.”

“Thank you, I’m fine.”

“Good. Until then,
Signora
.” He departed, Carla and Francesco at his heels and the other two trailing behind.

“Was he flirting with me?”

Bane looked surprisingly unmoved. “He’s Italian. I think they flirt in their sleep. I wouldn’t take it personally.”

“Wasn’t planning to. Can we go and see Jon? Do I have clothes?” I looked around the room. There, on a chair…

“I’ll let you get dressed.” He stole a kiss and off he went.

I eased slowly out of bed, wincing. Twenty-four hours was apparently long enough for every muscle in my body to stiffen up to an agonizing degree, but not to recover. It hurt to use my left arm—but not a fracture, surely? A patchwork of bruises covered me, most from the crash, no doubt. Some—especially on my battered and swollen face—from the charming specialCorps Captain. Shuddering, I slipped into the skirt and simple top as quickly as I could.

Getting the fiddly sandals done up, I shuffled out into the passage to join Bane, who was moving stiffly too. He grinned sympathetically at my geriatric progress, slipped his left arm around me, and walked me two doors further on.

The room was almost identical to mine. Jon lay in the bed, pale and unmoving, but his face was no longer that terrifying grey color. A peep under the blankets revealed his thigh neatly and professionally bandaged with clean white dressings. I sat on the bed and stroked his hair for a minute—but he was well out of it.

“The faster you get better, Jon, the faster we get to Rome,” I told him encouragingly, then stood up, hissing under my breath as my muscles stretched. “When is dinner, anyway?”

“He said six, when we spoke earlier.” Bane fished out his phone, which’d apparently survived the crash. “About two and a half hours.”

“Oh.” Disappointing. I was unspeakably ravenous.

Bane laughed. “Don’t look like that. We can help ourselves in the kitchen. I had a big bowl of pasta soon as I got up, but I could eat some more. Come on.”

I let Bane sit my aching bones at the kitchen table and watched him cooking. Where did he get his energy from? Sickening. Not that it was complicated—fortunately. He put pasta in boiling water and put sauce from the fridge into a pan to heat. Slopped the result onto two plates and handed me a fork.

After an unconventionally short grace—
thanks, Lord
—I tucked in like a runner leaving the starting blocks. Bane ate more slowly, chewing his food and grinning as though watching me eating was the most enjoyable thing he’d done in ages.