Wintercraft by Jenna Burtenshaw

selection of new council members. The welfare of Albion fell secondary to the greed and personal gain of those in charge of its laws and council seats began to be handed down through bloodlines, offered to people who could pay their way into power, or presented only to those whom the existing councilmen knew they could trust. Shaped by such grasping and devious hands, Albion soon began to suffer.
     
    No one really knew when the first change came. There was no single moment, no sudden day when everything was different. Darkness crept slowly over Albion. The High Council became more secretive, the wardens gradually drew back from the wild counties and, without their protection to rely upon, travel between the towns became dangerous. People began to go missing on the roads and many chose to stay within their own walls, letting nature creep in around them rather than setting out to brave the world alone.
     
    Within fifty years of the wardens’ retreat the councilmen had become suspicious of their neighbours and wary of their own people. They were rarely seen outside their chambers. They recruited the wardens as their protectors and enforcers, called back the trading ships and put them to work patrolling Albion’s borders instead. Within a hundred years, the towns had become completely isolated, their people linked by only two things: the High Council’s laws and the night train’s tracks.
     
    At that 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 whilst 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 just the same. 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 was 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 slowly changed from night-time grey to patchy indigo, then pale violet