Chapter Fifty-Three - Sleeping Car

The train made me nervous.

Actually, sitting down and not doing anything made me nervous; the train just forced me to do that.

Clin and I had been sitting in the passenger car for nearly two hours before the train finally started to move. The car wasn’t uncomfortable. Barely-padded cushions covered in some cheap beige cloth, a sheet metal ceiling and floors and walls. There was some effort to keep the cabin cool, with little vents blowing lukewarm air around, but it wasn’t all that impressive.

At least we had a small view from the round windows lining the walls. We’d get to look out and see the spectacular dunes, and sand, and more dunes, and maybe even some sand until we made it to Flatbluffs.

“Are you okay?” Clin asked.

I shrugged. We were sharing a bench, a narrow one that had our shoulders rubbing. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said.

He nodded slowly. “If you say so,” he agreed. “I regret not bringing a book or two.”

“Never was much of a reader,” I said.

“Really? You don’t seem uneducated.”

I eyed him for a bit. “I know my letters and numbers,” I said. “Just never been minded that way like some folk are.”

“That’s fair,” he said. “Not everyone has the gift for poetry or math.”

I sniffed. “You do poetry?”

He shifted, nose rising. “I’ll have you know that it’s considered quite appropriate for a young elf to know the classics.”

“Please don’t,” I said.

His ears twitched, just a bit. They were partially hidden by his hat, but not so much that I couldn’t see them from this close up. “Between you and I, I never did like it. It’s all very pretentious, and hardly enjoyable at all.”

“Then what does the brave elf engineer read?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t like it,” he said. “Mostly non-fictional texts. I enjoy keeping up with the trends in the industry, and seeing the work of other inventors and engineers. Sometimes they give me ideas, other times I can steal something particularly clever for myself. And, of course, it allows me to know who’s who, with the hopes that I might meet some of the more interesting inventors.”

“Huh,” I said. I didn’t know what to do with that information.

“What about you?”

“Like I said, I don’t read much. Never had the time or inclination for it. Time I spend sitting around with my nose in a book is time I could spend doing... just about anything else, really.”

“I suppose,” Clin said.

The silence stretched, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Clin was a good fellow, and I think we’d spent enough time near each other without chatting that I’d grown used to just being near him without having to fill the void with idle noise.

I spent a bit of time watching the desert roll by. The constant rumble and thump of the rails below was soothing, a mechanical song accompanied by the drumbeat of the Sandpiercer’s engine way out at the front.

We weren’t alone in the passenger cabin, but for all that there were plenty of folk leaving Daggerwren, there was plenty of cabin space. No crying children or anyone with a cough, at least.

I’d still have rather been in Rusty, but I couldn’t have everything.

I don’t know how or when, but I fell asleep.

Something shook me, and I woke with a start to find my face pressed up against Clin’s shoulder.

“The food is being served,” he said.

I swallowed, sat up straighter, then turned my face away to wipe my mouth clean. I could feel my cheeks warming for just a moment before I cleared my throat. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Food, as it turned out, wasn’t anything special. Some boiled tubers, a bit of sauce that tasted a bit like diluted goat’s cheese, and a tiny slab of what the person handing the meals out called a steak, and I called a boot heel.

I hadn’t been expecting much, and yet I was still disappointed.

“You might want to go to bed after all of this,” Clin said.

“I’m good,” I said.

I felt, rather than saw, someone leaning up from behind me.

My hand dipped to my gun.

“Oh, sweetie,” an older, crooning voice said. “You know, with all the noise this old train makes, hardly anyone can hear you having a bit of fun.”

I blinked and turned to find an old woman leaning forwards from the seat behind ours. She was smiling a big, toothless grin, one hand on our bench and another... rubbing the knee of the person next to it.

“Now, all that rocking you feel? If you go along with it, it just adds to the pleasure.”

“I’m... very sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

Clin was staring out ahead, his face having taken some colour even if he was as emotionless as ever.

“No need to be shy, love, this old hag has heard and done it all. You should enjoy a bit of peace and quiet with your boy here. Once you have a few brats, it’ll take gods know how long before you find a bit more. Why, my husband and I were just enjoying our retirement until that little fiasco with the goblins.”

I looked at the woman, partially impressed by her daring--she wasn’t exactly keeping her voice down, and we were hardly alone--and somewhat horrified at how wrong she’d gotten things.

Clin wasn’t the last man on this dustball I’d sleep with, but he wasn’t my first choice either. “I think you’re having yourself some fundamental misunderstanding, ma’am,” I said.

“Oh, don’t be a prude, you’re too young for that,” she said. “It’s best to enjoy these things while you’re still young and spry. My, by the time you’re my age, things dry up worse than that desert out there.”

“I think,” Clin said as he stood up. “That the lady is entirely correct. Shall we?”

I gave him a look, but there wasn’t anything suspicious in his eyes, so I took his hand and got up, much to the old lady’s cackling delight. Clin guided me to the back of the passenger car, then out into a small, sandy airlock between train cars.

“I do hope you’re not thinking you’ll be having a fun time,” I said.

“No, hardly,” he replied.

Somehow, his easy dismissal pissed me off a little.

“I just didn’t feel like dealing with the lady’s prattling. She talked the ear off another couple while you slept. I don’t know if I have the patience to be the centre of her attention.”

“Hmm,” I replied. We crossed from one car to the next, heading towards the front of the train. I couldn’t help but eye the drop between cars and the rails flashing below.

The cabins weren’t all that big. Maybe some two metres deep and a meter wide. No windows or anything, and just a vent in the ceiling to keep the place cool. The centre of the car was bisected in half, with cabins on either side of the wide car.

There was one problem that immediately came to mind as I took in our room. There was just the one bed.

Clin stared at it, then very carefully let go of my hand which he was still holding onto. “I’ll sleep on the floor,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. “We’ll sleep opposite ways. Just don’t stick your elf feet in my face and we’ll both come out of it better.”

“You know, it’s considered very taboo to sleep with a woman you’re not married with, at least in my culture.”

“Keep your little sandsnake in its hidey place,” I said. “This is for literal sleep. I think you’ve seen me kill enough things stronger and tougher than you to get a good idea of the sort of pain I’d inflict on you if you had any idea otherwise.”

Besides, I was hardly going to sleep in the buff. What if some punk tried to rob me in my sleep?

I did remove my boots, the old leather things peeling off with a comforting squeeze. I left my hat on a hook by the door.

I picked a side, the one that would allow me to shoot anyone coming into the door unannounced, then made sure my revolver was close at hand.

We had a night of this, then the entire next day onboard this train. It was a day and a half long trip. With the amount of time it took us to leave, I figured this might not be our only night aboard.

Clin took a place next to me, keeping his distance and minding his hands. He didn’t even get under the covers.

Smart man, that Clin.

I was surprised at how easy it was to finally slip back to sleep.

***