Long Live the Queen (Book 5 of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Twenty Four: Pine-dark

Ellini took three trains and a coach that night, always heading south, never standing still long enough to wait for more direct transport. And, all the time, the dark cloud followed her. It remained behind her, too constant for it to be following any sort of road.

At York, the passengers were standing in tight-knit groups, discussing the phenomenon. An explosion at a chemical factory, the station master said. Either that, or a freak storm. By the time Ellini passed through Birmingham, a hasty evening edition of the Times had been put together, claiming that the 'unusual atmospheric disturbance' was in fact a tornado.

And it looked like a tornado, as it grew on the horizon. Ellini was dozing by the window on the final train – the one which should at last bring her into Oxford – but she couldn't bear the thought of sleeping with that thing at her back, so she sat on the opposite seat, facing the way she had come, and snapped out of her tense, ominous dreams from time to time to keep an eye on it.

Yes, it could be a tornado – a pillar of dark cloud with fire at its heart. According to the Times, it left anything in its path wrecked and smouldering.

It was hard to lead that thing straight to Oxford – where her girls were, where Jack and Sita would be sleeping. She had to remind herself that Myrrha would be coming to Oxford anyway, to get her hands on Gram, and it was only in Oxford that they had a chance of killing her.

It was dawn when the train approached Tackley, a little village to the north of Oxford. Ellini jerked awake, rubbed the condensation from the glass, and peered out. The cloud was still there, like an immense winter tree on the horizon, but it was movement closer to hand that caught her attention.

Someone was standing on the platform, peering in at the windows as the train slowed to a halt. She was wreathed in steam from the engine, like a Djinni emerging from a bottle, but there was no mistaking that bulk – or its awkward, surly movements. It was Val.

She must have been in a different part of the palace when the explosion happened. Either that, or Myrrha had dragged her back to life somehow, using an object sacred to her.

There wasn't time for more than a glimpse. Ellini couldn't tell whether Val was haggard or singed or limping – only that she was Val.

She drew away from the window as Val turned in her direction. Was she waiting to see who would get out, or was she going to get on? There would be no escape if they were on the same train together, and it was still a good twenty minutes' journey into Oxford. She would have time to search every compartment.

Ellini went back to the window, her breath misting up the glass, but Val was nowhere to be seen now.

Alarm seized control of her legs. She got up, opened the door to the compartment, and slipped into the corridor, her heart in her throat. She couldn't hear anything but the rushing of the steam.

Still, she could use that, couldn't she? Val couldn't see through a cloud of steam any better than she could.

She slipped onto the platform, keeping close to the engine, and groped her way through the steam until she found the stable yard. There were no cabs at this time in the morning, but there was a drover's cart, and – oh yes – a gentleman's riding horse, being held by only one groom.

That would be fast. It would take Val a long time to find anything to match it, even if she managed to get off the train before it pulled out of the station. And Ellini still carried her brass knuckles – the ones she had used to punch Jack's lights out in Radcliffe Square.

In the whistling and chugging of the train's departure, the groom didn't hear her approach. And the gentleman's horse, like a proper thoroughbred, didn't bat an eyelid when she leapt out of the steam and gave its keeper a thwack across the jaw.