The Northwest Express

  There was someone doing a drum roll on the inside of her aching skull. That, or someone had put her in some kind of bizarre torture device that was making her whole body vibrate periodically someone kicked the rather uncomfortable bed she was lying on.

  Taa-ta-ta-ta, taa-ta-ta-ta, taa-ta-ta-ta…

  "Nooo," she groaned, waving her hands feebly at the noise. "'m just… little…"

  "Hungover, more like," said a voice, far too loud, and far too close.

  Feminine. Arrogant, with a sort of stupid sounding up-down-up-down accent where 'f' and 'v' sounded the same—elvish. She knew that voice…

  Marci cracked open an eye. Then she shut it. Too hard. She'd start smaller.

  "Whozzat?" she said.

  She frowned, the memory of crashing into something hard and bricky: a chimney? Hadn't she flown into a chimney? She didn't feel injured, beyond the pounding of her head from whoever was drumming on it.

  "Wherami?" she said.

  She tried opening an eye again.

  Nope.

  "The train," said another voice, also familiar, but husky, masculine, and far more pleasant to listen to, one of the sing-song accents of the Northnds. Kattjen, she thought. Also, familiar. More familiar.

  "Whozzat?" she repeated.

  "For fuck's sake, Marci," said the man's voice. "It's me, Of."

  Marci cracked open an eye, and this time triumphed, managing to catch a glimpse of a small train compartment, with its fine polished oak walls that danced in the rattling mplight, and the two other occupants.

  The first was Of, the dashingly handsome kattdjur man who she had, regrettably, parted from romantically after an utterly mutual agreement and she didn't lust at all after anymore at all. He was sitting across from where she was sprawled over two seats, and had an open journal in his p and a pen in his hand. Probably indulging in his passion, poetry. Marci would have never told anyone, least of all him, but she had kept each and every single one of them he had ever written for her in her depressingly light purse. Sometimes, when she was coming down from her buzz, she sat on a roof somewhere and read them by the light of the moon.

  Next to him was the source of the annoying accent. A tall, statuesque elvish woman whose good looks were significantly marred by the fact that Marci knew about the personality that went along with them: Anke Lohman.

  Anke was the Spiritbinder of Of's party who made ritual contracts with various fey, infernal, and elemental beings in order to very poorly imitate the mathematical and scientific rigour of the true wizardry that proper spellcasters like Marci did. The elf was probably the reason that Marci, apart from the head, didn't feel like she had run into a chimney.

  The elven woman was wearing a tight leather bodice that was totally impractical for adventuring, a fred green skirt that was shorter than Marci's imminently sensible fairy fashion, and thigh high boots that Marci did have to admit were actually very nice, scraps of which were visible under the long forest green cloak she was using as a bnket. She had slime-green eyes that glinted like beetle carapaces beneath a tacky amount of charcoal eyeshadow, mud brown hair pulled up into an eborate braid, a haughty mouth smeared with too-bright red lipstick, and unrealistically rosy powder on her cheeks and cleavage.

  Marci did not like her.

  "Oh, it's you," said Marci, closing her eyes again and slumping back onto what felt, and smelt, like Of's trusty once-bck, now grey cloak: soap from its weekly wash, and a hint of the dried vender from the small bags he put in tiny pockets in the seams.

  She frowned, then cracked open an eye again. Hadn't they been being chased?

  "What happened to my mother's thugs?" she asked. Well, she asked something that sounded vaguely like that. Her tongue felt all big and fuzzy and dry.

  "Got into a shoot-out with the enforcers, and, somehow, no one noticed you face pnting into the cart full of linen," said Of.

  With an effort of will Marci sat up, accepting a wineskin that was pushed into her hands. It was, unfortunately, water, but that was better than nothing, and she took several long gulps as she peered owlishly around the carriage.

  "You are welcome, by the way," said Anke. "You broke your cvicle. I could have left it, you know."

  "But then how would you have gloated?" said Marci, rubbing her colrbone, which was a bit sore still.

  "You ungrateful little-"

  "Hey, can we not?" said Of, grimacing and turned to look out the dark window, which his excellent vision could probably pierce.

  "Oh, very well," said Anke, leaning in against him, running a hand over his chest, and giving Marci a predatory smile. "But only because it's you, my little kitten."

  Marci, who had been halfway through another sip spat water all over herself, spluttering as it went down the wrong back.

  "You- you-" coughed Marci, raising a finger towards Anke. "You're fucking her!?"

  Of groaned and closed his notebook. "Marci, please-"

  "You're fucking her?" repeated Marci, jabbing her finger at the Spiritbinder. "She's a greedy little sociopath-"

  "Oh, here we go, and the anti-elvism begins already," said Anke, rolling her eyes dramatically. "I told you, not five minutes, didn't I kitten? Didn't I tell you?

  "Naked greed is not a culture!" spat Marci. "I like plenty of elves-"

  "Enough!" said Of firmly. "It is too early for this, and who I have a retionship with is none of your business."

  Marci scowled at him.

  Sure, it was technically none of her business if he wanted to have the world's worst taste. They weren't in a retionship, and he was under no obligation to tell her who he snogged—she certainly didn't tell him. But it was still… obscene. Anke was hot, sure, but she was also proudly self-centred, arrogant, haughty, and the only reason she wasn't back in Velubos trying to climb her way up and over all the other elves engaged in ascending the 'great vine of commerce' was because she was so shit at it she'd had to flee to avoid debtor's prison.

  Marci, however, kept her accurate assessments to herself, and looked at the window, peering into the gloom and searching for some kind of ndmark. Of had mentioned Saxmoor, which was a northwestern area in the Altnd Empire, the rgest and most prosperous of the predominantly human realms. Krefeld am Nain was also part of Altnd, so nominally the same country; although, in reality, the real power y in the hands of the regional Princes and Margraves, not the Kaiser.

  Fairy sight wasn't bad, but she couldn't make out much of anything through the windows. It must have been somewhere near the Witching hour.

  Marci focused and flexed her fingers, casting a simple spell that was admittedly much easier without the fuzzy and comfortable embrace of drink. Some runes appeared in the air: three forty-three in the morning, two days after she had hit the chimney and passed out.

  "I was out for a whole day?" she said.

  "Rampant alcoholism will do that," sniffed Anke. "The state of your liver, you're lucky you're not human. And the snoring, Earthmother below, the snoring."

  Marci made an obscene gesture, earning a derisive sniff from the elf.

  "After your spell wore off, I managed to carry you back to our hotel in a sack," said Of.

  "A sack!?" protested Marci. "That- that's not OK! I might be small, but— but"

  "Would you rather be in prison?" said Of irritably. "Because it was a sack or getting arrested—you're wanted by the enforcers. Might want to avoid Krefeld for a while."

  "On what grounds!?" said Marci. "Is defending oneself a crime now?"

  "Using highly destructive battle-magic within a city is, yes," said Of. "They managed to get the fire under control, and thankfully no one was killed, but half the mill went up."

  "Anyone could have thrown that fireball."

  "I saw you do it," said Of. "And it turns out, no, only wizards can throw fireballs."

  Marci grumbled. Well, that was true. She supposed she was thankful that no one had been hurt, although she very much enjoyed intoxication, it was true that her inebriated self was a little bit less responsible than sober Marci. Which was part of the appeal, frankly.

  They psed back into silence, Marci, at Of's insistence, munching on some bread and cheese, Of writing his poetry, and Anke making a point of snuggling up against him with a particurly smug expression on her face, like a cat that had just caught a particurly juicy mouse.

  Stars, Marci hated her.

  Slowly the dawn began to break, an orange glow from the east pushing back the darkness, shimmering through the thick, heavy fog. The sun rose, its heat burning off the fog until the train was streaking past rolling fields of wheat and barley.

  Saxmoor was the breadbasket of the central Southnds, an agricultural capital that still retained some of its old agrarian charm, not entirely swallowed by smokestacks and manufactories.

  The train began to slow sometime before seven in the morning, and in the nearby cabins Marci's sensitive ears caught other passengers preparing to depart. Of and Anke both grabbed their bags, but Marci, who travelled much lighter, and lived a humble life that eschewed material goods that could be sold for a bit of coin for a pint of four already had everything she owned on her.

  The train began to pass by workshops and houses, slowing further until, with a screech of metal and a whistle, they came to a stop next to the long, low ptform where bleary eyed travellers heading further north and west towards the Bordernds were waiting. A few of them looked like merchants or professionals, but many of them looked far, far poorer—farmers, or perhaps those who had been farmers.

  "Saxmoor!" shouted someone from the ptform. "Saxmoor!"

  Anke and Of jumped down the steep steps, and Marci floated after them. She'd visited Saxmoor before, back when she'd been an adventurer-

  No, she reminded herself. The first time she'd been an adventurer. Because she was one again and, well, some small part of her hoped that maybe she'd manage not to fuck it up for a-

  Anyway, she'd been there before. She didn't remember it being nearly as busy, however, nor did she remember farmers taking the train.

  The station was a rge, grand stone affair that had been constructed as some kind of pet-project of the local Prince some sixty years earlier. It had a great vaulted ceiling held up by wrought iron sthered in green paint through which steam from the train's boiler danced and swirled. There were four ptforms, each with massive hanging banners of the local Noble House, Hirschweg: red and gold with an antlered hart design. There were a few kiosks here and there, selling treats and pick-me-ups for weary travellers. Her eyes immediately flicked down to a small bar at the end of the ptform where she knew they did a really nice stout…

  They moved down the ptform, working against the horde of humans pressing to get onto the train. There were a few non-humans too, dwarves and elves and kattdjur and other 'beastly races,' the old, very much not politically correct way for northerners who had ears or tails or some kind of feature 'in common'—although that was also not the correct way to refer to them either—with an animal. There were a few fairies who looked like merchants, who Marci regarded somewhat warily, but they paid her no heed, entirely focused on getting onto the train.

  "I just need to use the little girl's room," said Anke as they reached the end of the ptform, where a set of stairs led up into the station proper, and beneath which the pub was crammed on one-side, and the washrooms on the other.

  Anke sauntered off, and Of's eyes flicked between the pub, the washrooms, and Marci. A rush of anger shot through her.

  "I need to go too," he said slowly. "Marci, promise me-"

  "I don't even have any fucking money to buy one, OK?" she said. "And I agreed, get off my arse, Stars."

  The washrooms were pretty busy, and smelt awful, a mix of ammonia and cheap soap. The mirror above the wash basin was cracked, and when she looked into it, she almost started in surprise at the fairy staring back at her.

  Her aqua blue hair which she was so proud of hung limp and nk around her heart-shaped face. Great bags sagged beneath her bright blue eyes. Her cheeks were sunken and their rosy hue had spread to her nose. Marci wasn't old, just in her early thirties, and fairies could live for centuries, but she didn't look like the young woman she was.

  She reached into her skirt's pocket and pulled out her purse, fumbling past old poems that Of had written for her, a pressed flower she kept in a slip of paper from her homend, and a pair of silver coins that were her absolute st reserve, until she found what she was looking for: a bck and white photograph, taken when she had graduated from her Bachelors of Arcane Studies.

  She held it up, comparing the smiling, full faced, well-kept young fairy with herself. There was a continuity there, a link, but she would have gone for 'poor, destitute cousin,' not 'just eight years ter.'

  Of was right. She was a mess.

  She put the photo and her purse away, turned on the water, and then began to scrub at her face until it hurt.