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men who probably haven’t seen too many ladies in
a while.”
    Basilard and Akstyr eased away from the
trapdoor to hug the shadows as well. They did not have long to wait
before the two men returned, and the fellows did indeed stop to
investigate the open door. Subduing them was painless, and
Maldynado and Basilard were soon atop the rail car, dusting their
hands off and sharing congratulatory pats for work well done.
    Akstyr rolled his eyes as he climbed outside
with them. After the months of training they had spent under
Sicarius’s elite tutelage, subduing two common laborers and dumping
them off a train wasn’t a meaningful victory. At least he’d gotten
to practice a little more of his art.
    Basilard signed, What now? Wait to do it again?
    “ Did anyone see how many
men stayed on the train with the weapons?” Maldynado
asked.
    Basilard shook his head.
    “ I can figure it out,”
Akstyr said.
    With the freight car trembling beneath him
and wind tearing through his hair, he wasn’t sure how well he could
concentrate, but he liked it when he got a chance to show off how
useful his skills could be. He sat cross-legged on the roof and
closed his eyes.
    The first Science book he had found, the one
from Larocka Myll’s mansion, had been on Thermodynamics. It was a
beastly hard text to understand, and it didn’t help that Akstyr had
to have Books translate the language for him, but Akstyr had
figured a couple of things out from it. For one, he had learned how
to sense heat. At first, that hadn’t seemed very useful, until he’d
realized that living things had body heat, and he could detect it
at a distance. Not a great distance, but he was improving all the
time, and he thought he could sense people a few cars away.
    It seemed strange that he could get tired
from using his brain in a big way, but Akstyr always did when he
was exercising the mental sciences, and he had to wipe sweat off
his forehead when he finished. That didn’t keep him from giving a
triumphant smirk and saying, “Four.”
    Basilard and Maldynado had flopped down on
their bellies and were pointing at something in the countryside and
arguing. Akstyr always lost track of time when he was practicing.
Since neither man seemed to hear him, he thumped Maldynado on the
boot to get his attention, then repeated himself.
    “ Oh, good,” Maldynado said.
“As long as that was taking, I thought we might have to wait and
count people as they came out for their morning bush
watering.”
    Akstyr scowled. Maldynado had no idea how
much work went into the mental sciences. He—
    Basilard patted Akstyr on
the shoulder and signed, Good
job.
    Akstyr’s disgruntlement
faded slightly. He appreciated the words—at least somebody noticed that he
was useful in the group—but he shrugged and said, “Whatever.” It
was important not to let people know that what they thought
mattered. That gave them too much power.
    “ Let’s pay them a visit,
shall we?” Maldynado asked.
    Basilard signed, What happens when the train stops to make its
delivery and nobody’s there to help unload the goods? The
recipients might be suspicious.
    “ They’d be more suspicious
if the people who did arrive said half of their team had gone missing on the ride
over,” Maldynado said. “This way, they’ll think there was a mix-up
in the communications phase of their plan.”
    “ That’s actually a good
point,” Akstyr said.
    “ Don’t sound so surprised.”
Maldynado nodded toward the weapons car. “Let’s be quieter about
our approach than those lard-brains were. Maybe we can take out
these four before they wake up.”
    Akstyr appreciated that Maldynado wasn’t so
strictly warrior-caste that he insisted on challenging the enemy to
a duel or fair fight or some heroic storybook thing like that.
Sometimes aristocrats didn’t have a clue about the real world.
    Maldynado led the way across the rail cars,
jumping from rooftop to rooftop, until they reached the one just
before their