Kara had mixed feelings about hearing the name Blackfeather.  When she’d first found the job in Germhacht she had been pleased, knowing the Blackfeathers would be there.  That feeling had shifted toward annoyance as she realized that the Blackfeathers being there meant they would interfere while she was trying to pull off her job.  She’d been hoping recently that she might just avoid them entirely.  She ought to have known she wasn’t that lucky.

            “You think Blackfeather planned to dig up all of the lost empire of Narmos for a single item?”  The younger voice sounded skeptical.

            “Oh, he pretends to catalogue everything, and to turn in full and tidy lists to the governments and the Society, but he pockets things like everybody else, and I’ll swear it’s the seal of Kesh that he’s after.  I saw that lackey of his, Sheridan, in the library poring over texts about it.  Mark my words, he wants it.”

            The younger man’s voice was like ice.  “You jeopardized my entire academic career on a petty—”

            “I told you I will not be addressed in that tone.  I created your career and I can end it.”

            Kara was getting bored with the family bickering.  She stopped listening and ran her hands around the lining of the case, looking in all the usual places for secret pockets and compartments.  The back of a drawer proved to have a false bottom, and Kara was made happy by the discovery of several small parcels.  She pocketed them for later.

            The boring argument was abruptly broken off by a sharp and insistent knock upon the door.  It was a knock of authority, and Kara froze again, knowing what it meant.  The younger gentleman opened the door with an annoyed question, and the train guard answered him with a half-heard apology and inquiries as to whether either gentleman had seen any trace of a ragged dark-skinned boy in a black coat.  The younger gentleman answered rather rudely that they had not, and when the train guard suggested that he might make a search of the compartment, the older gentleman tiraded him with language that impressed even Kara.  The danger of the train guard having been soundly rebuffed, the door shut again, closing Kara in with the two bickering nobles. 

            Kara unwrapped one of the smaller parcels and deduced by feel that it was a metal face.  She tried her teeth on it and decided it was gold.  Her luck was getting better.  The door to the train compartment opened again, and both men abruptly stopped speaking.

            “Father, Varden, is something wrong?  I heard shouting from this carriage.  The guard says there’s been a thief through some staterooms.  Did he come in here?”  The new voice was a child’s, accented like the others.

            “No, Morly, everything’s well,” the younger man said quickly.

            “If the thief had tried coming in here, we’d have pitched him out the window,” the older man said, in a voice both jovial and false.

            “It’s terribly exciting, isn’t it?  And we’ll be rounding the Hillesbrau falls in another minute, come see!  Please come see.”

            “All right, we’ll come.”

            “Lead on.”

            Kara sighed with relief as the compartment door slid shut behind them.  She crept out of the trunk, rubbing at her cramped legs, and slipped to the door.  Peering out, she saw that the noble family had not gone far.  They all stood looking out the window across the narrow passage: an older man in a frock coat and face powder; a tall, thin young man, handsome but for his scowl; and a small boy with long, messy black hair and a wrinkled cravat.  The small boy was bouncing excitedly and pointing at things out the window.  Kara paused for a moment, unsure where to go next, and then the little boy pulled the two men further along the corridor for a view out another window.

            Kara eased the compartment door open soundlessly and crept down the corridor in the opposite direction.  After crossing three cars without incident, Kara breathed easier.  All these cars had already been searched, and she was in lower-class territory now.  If people could find anything to steal from the passengers in these cars, no one cared.  A compartment door opened suddenly just ahead of her, and a small boy with blond hair stepped out into her path.

            “Kara?”

            Kara stopped, frowning down at the boy.  She recognized him.  He was a little taller, but no less wide-eyed and gullible-looking than he’d been last year.  If anything, Jon Gardner’s blue eyes had gotten bigger.  He smiled at her.  “You’re here!  Djaren said you would come.  How are you?”

            “Fine.”  Kara looked both ways, watching for guards, and peered into Jon’s compartment.  His older brother Tam was there, too, a bit taller and even more awkward than last year.  His hair looked like it had been cut by way of a bowl and some pruning shears.  His big hands fumbled with a paper, and he dropped it as he looked up and saw her.  “Kara?”

            “Shut up, you talk too loud.”

            “Hello, Kara,” a mild adult voice greeted her.  Kara jumped, as the scar-faced and slender Professor Sheridan looked around the corner of the door.  He unnerved her even when he wasn’t popping unexpectedly around corners.  He wasn’t right, somehow.  He was too young to be a Professor, his clothes were a good forty years out of date, his ears were strange, and his otherwise handsome young face along with all his visible skin was covered in a web-work of faded scars.  That, and he shared some kind of mysterious past with the undead monster that had attacked him, the Gardner boys, and the Blackfeathers last summer at an archeological dig Kara happened to be robbing.  He smiled at her, seeming unbothered by her grimace.  “You may want to speak inside the compartment.  There were some guards through earlier looking for someone.”  His look said that he guessed who that someone was.

            “They were rude fellows, too,” Tam put in, his backward Shandorian accent much thicker than his little brother’s.  “They gave us suspicious looks.”

            “I can’t stay.”  Kara frowned.  “I’m not here to chat.”

            Jon looked hurt, but before Kara could be ruder, or instead say something nice, she noticed a silvery glow emanating from his hand.

            “You still have that thing you found in the tomb, eh?”

            Jon looked down, surprised, “It doesn’t normally show so much.”  He stared at his palm, glowing with a lacy silver design, and then shoved his hand deep into his pocket. 

            “Explaining that to Ma was difficult,” Tam said.  “She still seems to think that enough soap will eventually make it go away.”

            “But really,” Jon said, “most of the time it’s quiet, nearly invisible.”  He glanced down worriedly at his now glowing pocket.

            “Right.  Well, I don’t envy you.”  Kara sensed movement a car down, and looked up to see a guard walking the length of the car ahead.  “Look, I’ll see you later.” 

            She walked off without waiting for an answer, trying to walk casually.  Time to find a nice quiet luggage car to hide out in for the rest of the trip, and avoid people, noble and strange, altogether.  It would be nice, just for once, to have an uneventful summer.  She could steal things in peace and quiet.

© Ruth Lampi 2010