Now, there’s a nice boy, Wayne thought, patting his arm and hobbling forward. One by one, people made way for him. Sometimes it took a little fit of coughing that sounded like it might be contagious. Wayne was careful not to look like a beggar. That would draw the attention of constables, who might think he was looking for marks to pickpocket.

No, he wasn’t a beggar. He was Abrigain, an old woman who had come to see what the fuss was about. Abrigain wasn’t rich, nor was she poor. Frugal, with a meticulously patched coat, a favored hat that had once been fashionable. Spectacles thick as a dockworker’s wits. A few very young boys let her by, and Abrigain gave them each a piece of candy, patting them on their heads. Nice boys. They reminded Abrigain of her grandchildren.

Wayne eventually reached the front. There, the Breaknaught sat in all its glory. It was a train car built like a fortress, with thick steel armor, shiny rounded corners, and a massive door on the side. That door looked like the one to an enormous vault, with a rotating wheel lock on the outside.

The door was open, and the chamber inside was mostly empty. A large steel cargo box had been welded to the floor at the center of the railcar. In fact, he could see through the door in the railcar that the cargo box itself looked as if it had been welded shut on all sides.

“Oh, my!” Wayne said. “That is impressive.”

A guard stood nearby, wearing the insignia of an officer in the private security force of House Tekiel. He smiled, puffing out his chest with pride. “It marks the dawn of a new era,” he said. “The end of banditry and railway robberies.”

“Oh, it’s impressive, young man,” Wayne said. “But surely you exaggerate. I’ve seen railcars before—I even rode on one, curse that day. My grandson Charetel wanted me to come with him and meet his bride over in Covingtar, and it was the only way, though I thought riding in a horse cart had always worked well enough for me before. Progress, he’d called it. Progress is getting locked up in a box, I suppose, unable to see the sun overhead or enjoy the trip. Anyway, that train car was like this one. Only not so shiny.”

“I assure you,” the guard said, “this is quite impregnable. It will change everything. You see that door?”

“It locks,” Wayne said. “I can see that. But safes can be cracked, young man.”

“Not this one,” he said. “Bandits won’t be able to open it because it can’t be opened—not by them, and not by us. Once that door is closed, it engages a mechanism tied to a ticking clock inside the doors. Those doors cannot be opened again for twelve hours, regardless of whether or not one knows the door code.”

“Explosives,” Wayne said. “Bandits are always blowing things up. Everyone knows that.”

“That steel is six inches thick,” the guard said. “The amount of dynamite it would take to blow it open would likely destroy the contents of the car.”