High on the branches of the Erlandson trees, the aerialists halted. They were dressed in simple whites, and their lithe, strong bodies seemed impervious to the altitude and the cold. They paused, perfectly balanced. There were five of them. Their leader, Carl, followed the slender branch of a tree as it bent over the sheer drop above the Nikulin like a fishing rod. He stood with his arms at his sides, watching the train.

“Well?” Loretta asked. She backflipped lazily across her branch and leaped into the air, catching one of the Erlandson tree’s rings. She raised herself to a sitting position above the others. “But I don’t want to rob another train,” she said.

Carl ignored her. Carl was tall and handsome with short-cropped blond hair and a thin blond moustache. He’d been loose and charming when Loretta first met him, she had hung on his every word. But he had gradually become more and more like stone, hard and unyielding. She tried to tell herself he simply wasn’t himself these days.

Carl’s gaze traced the path of the railway line. Ahead were two low mountains, the Petit Philippe and the Grand Philippe, and the train would pass through the saddle to reach the other side. Beyond, the Nikulin snaked under the towering mountain range, until it reached a natural breach in the landscape, a deepening into which both the river and the melting snows drained, forming a wide lake called the Chagrin.

Beyond the Chagrin, the train would take a sharp turn away from the mountains and down to the fertile plains, heading away from the Doinklands and into the Thickening proper, far from the sounds of war and the pratfalls of clowns. But to make its getaway, the train would have to first cross the bridge over the lake. . . .

The troupe of aerialists listened impassively as Carl outlined the plan. Loretta knew not to show any more emotion now, let alone disagreement. Carl tolerated chitchat but any outright disagreement would likely result in terrible punishment. Carl did not tolerate dissent. That, she’d learned the hard way. Carl could be charming, and funny, and wise: he had gathered them to him from across the sad places of the Escapement, helpless, hopeless, friendless, aimless—and he gave them help, and hope, and friends, and purpose. He made them a part of a family.

His family.

It was only later that Loretta realised what he really was, and what he was capable of doing.

Carl was finished. He looked at each of them in turn. Then they once again took to the air, leaping from vine to hoop, from stilt to swing, traversing the curious trees that grew all along this side of the mountain, and only the little caiques watched them pass.