Kit wasn't in the car.
It took maybe an hour for the miners to start singing. It was the longest Dally had ever sat in a transport in silence. When they finally did start it was loud to be heard over the thundering pistons, like long howls into the dark.
Apart from that, the rail car just like how they always were. Hot, loud, choking. The inside skin of the great machine was warm and damp. Its heat had built up and up until the thralls were panting, slumping over each other. Dally's nostrils went numb to the stink of sweat.
Nessie had been crying into Dally's back, and started again once they heard the singing. Maybe normally they'd be happy to hear so many new songs at once, but right now it hurt. The miners slang was different, and most of the songs Dally had never heard before. When they sang in Corps it had an accent like a mouth full of gravel. Dally leaned back against Nessie, humming under his breath.
The miner from before was politely looking away from them, staring into the dim red heat.
"What's your name?" Dally asked.
The miner sniffed, rubbed sweat off his face with one thick, clawed hand. "Ansel."
"I'm Dally."
"Is your friend alright?"
Dally shook his head.
Ansel hesitated, then awkwardly snaked an arm in between them to rest a hand on Nesette's shoulder. Nessie flinched, and then relaxed, sobbing again.
The day passed. The only way to tell was the pink light fading above them, then slowly coming back. The teeth-rattling shake of the train never stopped, and the doors never opened. After the first few hours the singing faded, as everyone's throats dried up.
"They'll give us water, right?" Red asked.
"Maybe," said Ansel, without opening his eyes. The miner had kind of adopted them, like they were a pack of dumb puppies. Nessie was asleep with their head in his lap.
After the second day it was obvious — there wasn't any water or food coming. The light faded again, leaving them all in red darker than blood.
"We're going to have to tap the car," Dally said to Red. His voice rasped, until he swallowed, painfully.
"Huh?"
Ansel growled in the dark, vibrating where he was crushed up against Dally's side. "He means cut one of those veins in the wall, drink some of the stuff in there." The miner didn't sound happy. "Where I come from there's consequences for that"
"There's consequences for not doing it," Dally said. "You think we'll make it to Provok without water?"
"You want to drink the car's blood?" Red asked.
"It'll be okay," Dally said. "They won't see. If they do I'll tell them it was me."
Ansel snorted, but he was grinding his jagged teeth in the dark. Dally could hear it - a squeak and click. After a while he rubbed his face. "You know how to do it so it heals clean?" he asked Dally. "The old ones can do it."
That was something they'd figured out early - everyone in the car was young. Ansel wasn't even thirty, and he was one of the oldest. Some of the miners were even younger than Nessie, thirteen or fourteen year olds.
"No," Dally said. "Kind of. Maybe if it was lighter."
"Psh."
But that seemed like an understanding, so the four of them squirmed their way through the crowd until they reached the wall a few feet away. The car's skin was warm, vibrating with the thrum of pistons. Dally felt around on it, and next to him the darker-dark of Ansel's shadow was doing the same.
"What're doing? Ta sokv?" asked a miner, watching them.
Sokv sounded like sakv; 'blood' in Corps.
"We need water," Dally said, which wasn't an answer.
"Idiots!"
"Here," Ansel said, with his palm flat on the wall.
There was a second where they considered in silence, then Ansel stepped aside. Their teeth were both sharp enough, but Ansel's were thick as rail spikes with serrated edges. Not good for a neat little bite.
Dally bent to run his fingers along the skin where Ansel was pointing. At first he didn't feel anything, until a deep thump ran through the walls and vibrated along the length of the car. An instant later a pulse swelled the vein under Dally's hand.
As careful as he could, he pinched the car's skin between his teeth, and gnawed until hot, oily blood spilled into his mouth. Dally gagged, flinched, started drinking. The stuff stung on the gums, sour and prickling. He knew it never got better. If he was lucky he wouldn't throw it all up later.
When he'd drunk as much as he could stomach he stood back and clamped a hand on the wound, until Ansel took his place. Then he crept back to his place on the floor, squeezing his eyes shut against a wave of nausea. But his throat didn't ache anymore.
Even if the miners thought they were idiots, they weren't too proud to take advantage. It took probably an hour or two for the whole car to drink from the tiny bite. The last, a young female, had to sit there with her fingers pressed into the hole, waiting for it to stop bleeding.
Red and Nessie had had some too, eventually, and maybe more than they should have. They were curled up around Dally, groaning and whimpering. All of them stuck together with sweat. He pat their backs, mumbling apologies.
Ansel was still upright. "Us tapping the rail-cars is probably why they think we can survive without water," he said, "you know? Why else would they put us in here for three days with nothing."
He was right, damn. Dally couldn't help laughing, doubling up and covering his face.
By sunset the stomach ache faded, and out of everyone only Nessie threw up. The floor started to absorb it right away, though the stink stayed. In the pitch black the miners started singing again, and Red had learned enough of their songs to start as well.
The light overhead glowed and faded one more time, before the brakes started to squeal. All of them fell over each other, with nothing to hold on. When the doors finally opened they were lying in tangled piles of limbs.
Although it wasn't actually cold, everyone shuddered at the same time in the fresh breeze. They squinted into the daylight, and tried to shake numb arms and legs awake.
There were four men outside the car, peering in at them. All of them were red-eyed and unshaved, but they wore the field version of the Savic Infantry Corps officer's uniform; dull olive with gold bars and pips. Dally had only ever seen it in posters.
One of them was a captain, he figured. At least, there was more bars on his shoulders. The man's dark tan skin sagged around the eyes and mouth, though Dally didn't know if it was age or hard living. He looked fifty, compared to the rumpled group of young men around him.
"This is it?" The officer had Gita's smooth Northern aristocratic accent, but no House jewellery. Just a heavy gold chain around his neck, and a ruby stud in his ear. For a second he took a pull on a thin cigarette, squinting into the dark.
His eyes passed disinterested over the sweaty bodies of the miners, slowing a little on Dally and the others. "They look weak," he said. "How many?"
"Around nine hundred," answered the young crewman holding the door open.
"I was promised sixteen!"
"There weren't sixteen to be had, sir, once we took out the infirm."
"More like Torsten had his claim first. The pig."
"...I wouldn't know, sir, but we only have the nine for you."
"What's in the front cars?"
"Ah," The young man squirmed, as the captain stared at him. "Those are for Captain Dejas. They're worse than your's, sir. Lots of defectives."
The captain stared for a long moment with heavy lidded eyes. For a second Dally thought he'd hit the crewman. Then he spat into the muck under the car. "Get my ones out."
Dally nudged Red as they stood, trying to move her into the shadow between him and Ansel. Ansel blinked, but caught on fast and immediately shoved her behind him, hiding her in the crush of bodies.
Red hissed at him. "What—?"
"Stay behind me," Ansel said.
It was getting better, but Dally was still sometimes stunned by how Lyle's thralls acted. Red hadn't ever had to worry before about being pretty, female and human-looking. She'd been safe.
And Dally had brought them all here.
Outside was blinding, after three days in the dark. All of them stumbled on the slope outside, skittering barefoot on loose grey rock. It wasn't warm or cold and a haze hung in the air, masking the shapes of low, crumbling buildings and small tents.
The captain had already turned away, and as soon as he was gone small groups of thralls came out of the fog. They loitered with hands on the flanks of the car, watching the unloading.
They were like thralls in the stray camp, Dally thought, but different. The Front thralls had even worse defects, but they seemed healthier, wary, more dangerous. Even in home form most were far too tall and heavy to pass as human, and crowned with full sets of spines. Lots of the miners had stiff, short tails, but some of these had full-length ones lashing behind them, or coiling restless around their ankles. One wasn't even really walking properly, switching between standing on two legs and running on their knuckles.
The officers didn't order the thralls away, and eventually a pair of them slunk closer, to the edge of the crowd where Dally and the others were standing. One was female and the other one was probably esict. The female grinned at them with three rows of teeth: on one side her jaw split like someone had hacked into her cheek. A contorted extra jawbone jutted forward from the gap, its razor-edged teeth twisting like they were trying to escape.
It was the kind of defect part that would have been sawn off and sanded down back in Savos Proper, but she didn't try to cover it. Actually, she looked like someone who knew she was fine. Extra teeth were good luck, whether they were in your mouth or not.
When she spoke Dally had to struggle to understand; this was a language he almost never heard outside of songs.
"You speak Corps?" she asked.
Dally and the others looked at each other, and no one volunteered. Dally swayed in place, struggling. "I — I speak...?"
The soldier snorted at the one beside her. She muttered something too fast for Dally to catch, and switched to Savic.
"You are thralls?" She asked, and pointed, like her friend wasn't already looking. She pointed at Dally, Red, Nessie. "Look at them. Hey, are your fathers humans?"
Wow. The railcar was starting to pull away behind them and Dally shook himself, glad the clatter and hum gave him a chance to think.
"We're just thralls," he yelled, "same as you."
"Strange!" Membrane flickered over her eyes.
Dally almost said that the soldier was strange, but not because of the defect; she had yellow hair like straw, and blue eyes. Even her skin was light as milk. Except maybe that wasn't rare, here; behind her he could see a few that looked the same. They looked like the Brairi thralls in the war posters; the enemy.
"You have a food?" asked the pale soldier. "Harpoons?"
He shook his head. "We haven't eaten for three days. No weapons."
The soldiers broke into a torrent of Corps curses. Dally understood those, at least.
"Why," she said, and it wasn't really a question.
"Thralls don't need to eat, right?"
It wasn't funny, but her laugh was so loud and bitter he wanted to die.
Dally was yelling louder and louder, and it took a second to work out why. Something was wrong with the rail-car.
The machine was barely picking up speed when the front end shuddered like it had ran into a brick wall. A ripple passed through the body, and the fine tendrils lashed crazily in the air. Then muscle started to split on each piston, one at a time. The hum turned into a screech like a pig being slaughtered, and the whole of the rail-car started to peel off the track.
The machine contorted, spiralled, segment by segment, into the air. It took what felt like an hour to fully derail. Each long piece arced against the sky, thrashing and buckling. There were sick crunches of bone as it collapsed back to earth, waves of dirt. Greasy blood pooled under the gills. One more shiver went through the monstrous body, and it went still.
Everyone around had stopped to watch, frozen in place. The front cars were full, Dally remembered.
The pale soldier had staggered a step closer. "Oh!" she said, clasping her hands to her head. "Oh! Fucking saf na Bailla Captain!"
When she caught Dally looking she gave him a baleful hiss. "Welcome to Provok."