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window, but otherwise there was little to mark this as a functional rather than a living
space. Bethany sat in a lounge chair—leather, of course, as was all the furniture—and
gestured for Marla and the others to seat themselves.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Bethany said. “The journey is the destination. The train
simply circles the track. This is where I live.”
“Constant movement,” Marla said. “Good for screwing up location spells.”
“A girl has to be careful when she lives in such a bad part of town,” Bethany said. “I’d
love to have a train that goes somewhere, but there’s not a lot of room for surreptitious
subterranean expansion under here. I’ve always wanted to live on a train, so I built this
little loop. It’s just a toy train set writ large, I suppose. I like to play.” Bethany flickered
her tongue.
Something in the front window went zipping past, a flash of gleaming blue on the wall
of the tunnel.
“A toy,” Marla said. “Spinning in a loop past runes inscribed on the tunnel walls,
generating kinetic energy, turning widdershins, keeping a magical field humming along.
Right?” Finch got power from his sex parties, Dalton from his computers, the Celestial
from ancient objects and an apothecary of rare herbs and potions, and Bethany had her
train. Marla found it all intriguing, if a bit foreign, since in recent years she’d drawn her
power from the bustling activity of the whole city she watched over.
“Good eye!” Bethany said. “Dalton rode this train a dozen times—well, his mirrorselves
did, mostly, Dalton One didn’t go out much—and he never noticed the runes on
the walls. Of course, he usually had other things to occupy him.”
“It’s a clever system,” Marla said. She had always admired fabricators and macromagicians,
people who made things. Marla had always been better at tearing things
apart, at least on the physical level (though she liked to think she was good at building
more theoretical things, like the complex structure of loyalty, fear, and obligation that
kept things running back home). And while Marla had little patience for people who
wore ostentatious piercings and tattoos, in Bethany’s case she could believe that bodymodification
was just an extension of that urge to change the shape of the natural and
make the world accord with her own desires. “But are you clever enough to stay alive?
There’s a sorcerer named Mutex picking off your associates, and he’s good at what he
does.”
“Yes,” Bethany said, tugging thoughtfully on the ring in her lower lip. “He’s becoming
more than an annoyance. I just got word about Dalton, a bit before you arrived.”
Rondeau, who was clearly already beyond mere boredom and well into the realm of
utter distraction, began humming and tapping his feet. He was on to Sergeant Pepper’s
now.
“Are your boys hungry?” Bethany said. “There’s a dining car a couple of compartments
back, with a well-stocked fridge. I’m sure there’s cold meat and bread back there if they
want to make sandwiches for themselves.”