Shadowcry by Jenna Burtenshaw Page A

time, the High Council’s ruling city was a small town that lived within tempting sight of Fume’s impressive towered skyline. The councilmen could no longer stand to see the greatest buildings of past ages being wasted on the dead, so with the help of their wardens, they took Fume for themselves, driving out the bonemen and killing any who dared to challenge the council’s claim. The Night Train was left to rust in its station. Towns were forced to bury their dead in open spaces that had once been parks or greens or gardens. Life gave way to death all across Albion and nothing was ever the same again.
    Within the protective walls of Fume, the councilmen led privileged lives, demanding more obedience from their people while offering them less and less in return, and when war came, the people accepted it without question, knowing they could do nothing else. No official reason for the conflict was given. Many speculated that Albion’s broken trade agreements were to blame, but no one really knew for sure and the High Council saw no reason to tell them. People were simply expected to do their duty: to live quiet lives and to fight when they were ordered.
    Albion had become a place of suspicion, doubt, and lies. The war dragged on, communities were torn apart by the wardens’ harvests, and living beneath the shadow of an unknown war eventually became an accepted way of life. Years passed, and soon there was no one left alive to remember that life had been any different.
    The people of Albion did not often like to talk about the way things had once been, and Kate was used to that way of thinking. Artemis had raised her to concentrate only upon what was there, right in front of her eyes. There was nothing to be gained from looking back, he always said; nothing except regret. But sitting in that train, listening to the creaking of her cage chains, Kate could not prevent her thoughts from turning to her own past and her memories of the place she was leaving behind.
    She remembered the smell of her mother’s oil paints and her father’s laugh as he worked alongside Artemis in the bookshop and she knew that, despite everything that had been going on around them, her family had been happy once. Now they were gone, Artemis was missing, and their precious bookshop was nothing but a burning shell. Kate hugged her knees up to her chest. There was no doubt that Albion was dying, but it seemed that her little part of it was dying more quickly than the rest.
    The clouds changed slowly from nighttime gray to patchy indigo, then pale violet and pink as the sun began to rise over the eastern hills. Kate’s body ached with cold. The blanket was too thin to keep the deep chill of winter at bay and her mind kept drifting into short snatches of restless sleep. Silas Dane’s face crept into her dreams, and the shivers of the huge train kept jolting her awake until eventually she heard the swooshing sound of stone arches passing overhead. The Night Train’s brakes engaged, sending a loud squeal screeching from the hot wheels, and Kate sat up, knowing that the sound could only mean one thing.
    They had arrived.
    Fume was Albion’s most fortified city, separated from the rest of the world by high outer walls and a wide river that had been diverted to circle it like a moat. Rows of empty stables stood along those walls, where travelers’ horses had been kept before war with the Continent had been declared. Dozens of wardens stood guard along the city’s perimeter and at the great black gates, ready to question anyone who wanted to pass through. But Kate could not see any of that herself. All she saw were more arches passing above her as the train slowed down, sweeping around a wide curve of track.
    â€œHold on to something,” said Silas, still standing beside her. “Now.”
    Kate grabbed hold of the bars just before the cage swung hard and the entire carriage tilted forward, descending into a