Kin

PROLOGUE: SHORTCUTS

TWO DARK-HAIRED YOUNG MEN, LEANING ON EACH other as if drunk. One of them reels, retching and coughing, the other makes soft soothing noises. There is a faint gleam—something silver, plucked from the drunkard’s pocket. He grabs for it, almost topples, and his helper speaks softly.

This is a small town, and the train is waiting. The two have twenty minutes before the train is resealed and plunges through the Waste, flora and fauna both Twisted from stagnant and wild Potential. Sometimes a train derails, other times, things attack the metal intrusion. So far, though, this journey has been uneventful.

There is an alley close to the station. Its shadowed mouth swallows both young men. The darkness is complete, except for a few faint gleams—silver, again. A swaying, a sharp arc of brilliance. A meaty, thudding sound.

When a young man boards the train later, he looks faintly troubled. But he has plenty of time to reach his sleeper compartment, and is settled on a wide, comfortable seat folded down into a bed when the whistle blows, a high piercing demand. Layers of charm seal the train again, and anyone left behind for any reason has to stay in this small town. To leave anywhere, you must pay for a fresh ticket. And a new indemnity, in case the Waste eats the train.

Or worse.

Steam billows. Cinders fall, dirty snow, and the metal beast heaves forward.

Afterward, the station is deserted. The town slumbers, too small for its sleep to be troubled by the problems of cities—urban cores full of slopping-over Potential, a Waste of its own. There was always the small, remote chance that the Waste might move in, and swallow the town whole. The next train to come through could well encounter a wilderness, its walls shattered and its buildings jumbled, its inhabitants no longer draining off Potential to restore their surroundings to normality.

Around the station, unTwisted trees planted beside ruler-straight sidewalks rustle, their thin branches shaken by a hot wind from the Waste as a maggot-cheese moon rises higher in an uncaring sky.

The train’s whistle, in the distance, is a lonely, mournful song.