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ahead of me. As she and Farra stoop and straighten, working the jigger’s see-saw arm, I remember my first journey to Ebony Hill, with Ronan and Esha. And my first return. Farra had led that exodus, too, seeing us safely back to Vidya.
    With my hand spread flat against the window, I gather the rhythmic vibration of the carriage in my palm. Ebony Hill has for a second time brought me something other than I expected.
    “It’s hardly fair, after your last visit, that you should have had to deal with this,” Saice had said, as we readied ourselves to leave.
    I’ve long since given up believing life fair. Was it fair my mama died when I was barely old enough to know her, or that Papa later joined her in an early grave? Was it fair that my Aunt Tilda should treat me and my brother so harshly, or that Colm’s Council on Dunnett so disguised the truth of the world that I couldn’t recognise it when I saw it? If I hadn’t found a stranger washed up on the shores of Skellap Bay, and risked my life to save him, I’d never have known that Vidya and Ebony Hill existed at all. I’d never have known, either, about guns and bombs and the way people who don’t even know each other can hate. Nor had the chance to read books, or to study and become a medic. I’d not have known Esha, or Truso, or Saice.
    And that wouldn’t have been fair either. I didn’t say any of that to Saice. “It’s helped me decide that I’m not going into research,” was all I told her.
    “I’m pleased to hear it.”
    “Amar won’t be.”
    Saice’s sudden smile had wiped a decade of cares from her face. “Amar and I trained together, did I tell you? He never had much time for patients. He has no affinity with people. Unlike you.”
    The jigger tops the short climb and curves into a cutting, its clay walls flickering past almost close enough to touch. “It’s all yours,” Farra tells Jofeia, stretching his arms above his head. “Keep the pressure steady on the brake.”
    Light floods back into the carriage as we roll out of the cutting. I crane my neck to catch my first glimpse of the ocean. The track runs downhill from here, the line cutting a broad sweep across the hill. Something flashes on the slope ahead. Farra, walking the length of the carriage, sees my worried stare. “I thought I saw —”
    He cuts me off. “There’s a Decon team out checking the tunnels. And Brenon’s patrol.”
    “The patrol was only supposed to go as far as the dead lake. We’ve passed that.”
    “Decon then.” There’s something he’s not telling me. There have been several sabotage attempts on the line over the past year, none as serious as the first, during last year’s hostilities. I push the memories away. As we begin to pick up speed, Farra relaxes.
    In the seat behind me, a small boy begins to grizzle. His mother, holding his sleeping sister in her lap, shushes him crossly.
    “Can you see the sea?” I ask him. “See how big it is?” He eyes me suspiciously. “When I was your age, I lived across the ocean on an island called Dunnett.”
    He checks the expanse of silvered water below us. “Aren’t any islands,” he says.
    “Not close enough to see. Dunnett’s a long way away.”
    His chin lifts in a skeptical tilt. “Why’d you come here?” he asks, leaning in against his mother’s side. She shifts to accommodate him.
    “Someone once told me stories about Vidya.” 
    He considers me doubtfully. “Where’s your mam?”
    “She died when I was young.”
    His mother glances at me.
    “What about your dadda?”
    “My Uncle Marn raised me, and his wife Tilda,” I say. “My brother Ty and our cousin Sophie lived with us too.”
    “Did they come to Vidya with you?”
    “No.”
    “Have you been to the city before?” Farra asks, rescuing me from the child’s interrogation.
    Wordless, he shakes his head. “He has,” his mother says. “We only left a year ago. He doesn’t remember.”
    Farra hunkers down beside the boy. “Well