Mina looked at Ferro, then at Zek. She was saved from answering by Jyx, who jumped in, saying, “You’re both idiots. But luckily, you’re with us, so that raises the average intelligence on this side of the ship.” She winked at Mina, who grinned back.

I think I really do have friends.

«You do,» Pixit said warmly.

“Look!” Jyx cried, pointing. “The city!”

Chapter
Fifteen

Laughing and jostling one another, the students and their beasts poured off the river ships onto the dock, and then they all crammed together into one of the trains. Mina was in the middle of it all—​Zek’s elbow rammed into her side, Chauda’s fishy breath on her neck, and Pixit’s shoulder pressed against her back. But for once, she didn’t mind the crowd—​she was with friends.

She belonged.

The doors slid closed, and the train zoomed away from the dock. All around her, the students and their beasts pointed and shouted at everything around them.

On the street below, a lightning guardian was creating a flower out of streaks of electricity. It sizzled and vanished before their eyes.

Farther on, two sun beasts were beaming light onto the glass panes in a skyscraper, in a rhythm that made it seem like it was a kind of dance.

By a fountain, six rain guardians were practicing their routine. One tossed a water-ball into the air, and another caught it and then threw it at a third, who then shot the water up into a spray that rained down like sparkling confetti, landing back in the fountain pool without a drop missed. The lightning kids cheered, Mina included. Did you see that? she asked Pixit.

«Do you see that?» He was looking up above the train, where six wind guardians flew in a V formation like geese. A hundred pieces of paper were tumbling in the wind behind them, and as Mina watched, the wind whipped the sheets into a spiral and then twisted them, folding each one quickly, until they became a hundred paper birds flying behind the guardians.

“Step lively, children!” Professor Werrin called. “There’s much more to see!” Thumping her cane and then holding it up so they could all follow, Professor Werrin led them off the train and across a bridge.

Looking down, Mina saw that the bridge itself was glass. She thought of the masterpieces in Mytris, made by graduates, and wondered if this was lightning-made glass. Or it could have been regular glass, heated by a sun beast and shaped by a sun guardian. Through it, distorted, she could see the streets of the capital, teeming with people and beasts and various carts and contraptions that ran on their own with so many gears that they looked like the innards of a clock.

Beside her, Jyx was bouncing as she walked. “Mina, I think we’re going to see her!”

«Who?»

Mina asked out loud for Pixit. “Who?”