The Everburning City

Interlude 15: To Answer The Call

Candice

"What?"

Miss Eridwen asked her question with an operatic rise on both her octave and volume. Candice, who had to sit through more than a couple trips to the theatre with her parents, would have given the stern old task-mistress a passing grade for her delivery.

But the question, and the theatrical delivery, put a nervous shiver through Candice. Miss Eridwen had given Candice orders while using a bone saw, and had given them with the same calm forcefulness she seemed to do everything with. Whatever had her practically screeching, it must be important. Candice she set down the bundle of bandages she was carrying back to the train in order to listen.

"Ma'am, you have orders to take additional cars, to help in evacuations."

"Son," Miss Eridwen said. She rubbed her fingers over the bridge of her nose as if she had a headache. "I run a mobile hospice. There's a very burning good reason I don't have more cars. And that reason was approved by people so high up you can barely make out the ground from their vantage. I go where I'm needed, which is anywhere people are most likely to be injured. The last place in the City I'm headed to is a barley field a single wall away from the City so that another train can fit more scotch barrels."

"Ma'am, this isn't a request. These are deployment orders."

"You have deployment orders for a transport. Which my train is not," Miss Eridwen insisted. "Now, I need you to stop holding up my resupply. Ideally, you could make yourselves useful and carry some boxes so I can get off your commander's precious platform."

"My orders come from the major," the soldier insisted, impressively unimpressed with Miss Eridwen. Candice wasn't sure if it was bravado, or confidence in how far the authority behind his orders extended. "And those orders mention you by name. Now, my commanding officer is the controller authority during an invasion, so unless you have something from further up my chain of command that contradicts what I'm telling you, you can either comply or come with me to a holding cell."

"My mandate is the Bureau of Health and Public Safety, direct."

"Right now, no Bureau mandate supersedes even my authority. The only people who can override my commanding officer right now are his commanding officer, Colonel Dremora, or the Lord Captain himself."

"I'm going to need to hear this directly from your lord and master," Miss Eridwen replied, crossing her arms.

"Understood. In the meantime, you will not re-board the train," the soldier said. Candice finally noticed the two bars on the man's sword. "Sergeant, have a few people babysit the engineers. Let them know we'll be hitching-on a half-dozen passenger cars, and we'll do right here."

Salutes and soldiers moving, making their captain's orders real and upending everything Candice had found to hold on to, as her world toppled around her. The opportunity to do something, to know she was doing meaningful work towards fighting the invasion, it was the only thing that had kept her sane and focused. Even the threat of losing that had her contemplating stealing the train, soldiers be damned.

The soldiers dispersed, and their captain departed to give further orders, looking for all the City as if he had forgotten them entirely. It looked, to Candice, as if that army captain simply expected them to comply.

And it seemed she wasn't the only one thinking that. Michael was marching towards Miss Eridwen, with both Ignio Demos and the quiet shadow in tow. Over the hours, and hundreds of miles they've been along, Ignio's makeshift squad of soldiers, shadows, orderlies, and a couple of bouncers for an illegal bar in Toppled Hill had become their unofficial security detail, protecting the train from both desperate refugees and Gloamtaken.