The Horns of Ruin Read Online Free PDF Page A

the nearest post now?"
    "Same post. It's just twice as far away now."
    "There's got to be one closer. Why the hell am I
asking an Amonite where I should go to hide from another Amonite?" I
started to pace around the fountain. The buildings surrounding us were part of
the old district, tired and stone and settling into themselves. Faces in the
windows quickly disappeared. "This is ridiculous."
    "There have been a series of post closings in the last
six months, mostly for maintenance issues," Cassandra said, again as if
she were reciting holy writ. "The southern horn of Ash has been
particularly hard hit, as the base level of that part of the city has been
settling into the lake at an unusual-"
    "Stop it. You don't say two words together all the way
here, and now you're giving a lecture. I don't need a lecture on city
infrastructure. What I need-"
    There was a roar that filled the square, and the ground
shook. I dropped to one knee and aimed my bully before I realized it was just
the monotrain line. Tracks ran across the northern edge of the square, the
elevated rails held up by rusty iron trestles that seemed to grow out of the
brick of the surrounding buildings. The train rumbled past, filling the square
with clattering noise and a wind that smelled of hot metal and burning grease.
When it was gone I looked at the girl.
    "The nearest mono station?" I asked. She nodded,
and we helped the old man to his feet.

    The mono lines of Ash travel the city in wide, sweeping
arcs, like the cogs of a giant clock. Riding one is never the most direct way
to your destination, but it is certainly the fastest. I ran up the stairs at
the nearest station while Cassandra and Barnabas struggled to keep up. I caught
the car just before it was leaving, kicking everyone out of the forward
compartment and holding the door while the Fratriarch got on. Some of the
passengers grumbled and then got on one of the other cars. A lot of them took
one look at my bully and just waited for the next line. I watched everyone who
got on the other car after us, then pulled the compartment shut. We rolled out
of the station with a groan.
    "I used to ride the train, when I was a boy,"
Barnabas said. He sat with his eyes closed, his head leaning gently against the
car window as we bumped up to our full speed. "My mother and I would take
it to the northern horn, to visit the docks. She made a brilliant fish chowder,
every Sunday."
    "They had trains back then, old man?" I asked.
"I always pictured you growing up in a cave, maybe with a mule or
something to carry you down to the rock store."
    "We had trains, Eva. And revolvers and elevators and
hot water." He smiled, and his face filled with wrinkles. "We were
very civilized people back then."
    "These lines were laid by Amon the Scholar, in the
hundredth year of the Fraterdom," the girl said. She was standing, leaning
against the wooden frame of the window, one hand on a leather loop that hung
from the ceiling. "He laid the lines and built the centrifugal impellors
that power them with his own hands."
    "Was this before or after he murdered his brother Morgan
on the Fields of Erathis?" I asked. "Oh, right, it must have been
before. Because afterward we hunted him down, chained him into a boat, and
burned him alive. So it must have been before that, right?"
    She didn't answer at first, swaying with the movement of
the train, her eyes on the city as it ripped past.
    "Yes," she said eventually. "It was before
all of that. But not much before."
    We rode in silence for a while, the Fratriarch breathing
quietly in his seat, the girl watching the window. I paced the length of the
car, my boots wearing down the already heavily worn carpet. It had probably
been nice carpet, once. I cancelled the invokations of the bullistic revolver
and just paced. I kept looking back at the other passengers in their cars, but
they made a point of not raising their eyes from their newspapers. I was
glancing back when the light hit, so at least I