Wintercraft by Jenna Burtenshaw

travelling upon ran alongside a stone wall that lined the track’s route, but Kate did not recognise this part of town. The houses were larger and grander than any other part of Morvane, yet few people lived there. The station cast too dark a shadow over that part of the Eastern Quarter. It made people uncomfortable. Kate had seen pictures of the station in books at her uncle’s shop, but he had never let her see it for herself. Now she was so close to it, she found that her curiosity had gone. She didn’t want to see it any more. All she wanted was to be back at home, getting ready for the Night of Souls, living life just as she had lived it the day before. But all that was impossible now. Silas had made sure of it.
     
    The driver shouted out to someone up ahead. A gate screeched open and the carriage wheels crunched on to gravelled ground, rolling past row after row of wheeled cages with flaming torches punched into the ground to light the paths between them. There were many more there than Kate had expected. What she and Edgar had seen in the market square must have been only a small part of the wardens’ plans for the town that day. There were at least five times as many cages outside that station than had been in the square, all filled with so many people that it was hard to believe the wardens had left anyone behind.
     
    Most of the prisoners were yelling angrily at the wardens, rattling their bars, trying to find a way out. Others were trying to bargain with them, offering up their businesses or savings for a second chance at freedom, while the rest just sat there, quietly accepting the grim truth that they were no longer in control of their lives.
     
    ‘Every one of these people will do their duty to Albion,’ said Silas. ‘Just as thousands of others have done before them. You are fortunate you are not one of them.’
     
    ‘My uncle is one of them,’ Kate said quietly.
     
    ‘That part of your life is over. There is nothing you can do for him now.’
     
    The blazing torches lit up the night and, as the carriage turned, Kate finally saw the station with her own eyes. It was an ancient place, centuries old, built for a single track and one special train. Kate knew from her books that, long ago, the gravel where the cages now stood had been a beautiful garden where the coffins of Morvane’s dead were taken before being carried by train to Albion’s graveyard city. Friends and family would have gathered for a funeral in that garden before passing the coffin over to the bonemen - the keepers of the dead - who took it on to the train, ready to make its final journey south.
     
    The bonemen were a select group of the Skilled who had devoted their lives to helping the spirits of the dead pass safely out of the living world and into the next. They had once been the sole guardians of the graveyard city, performing complex rituals, maintaining the tombs and graves of the many families interred beneath its earth and ensuring that their remains were treated with respect long after their funeral day had passed. But that was before the wardens had claimed the Night Train for themselves, before the bonemen had been driven into hiding and one of the old High Councils had walled up the country’s burial ground, transforming it into the great fortress city of Fume.
     
    Fume was now a place for the wealthy, not the dead, and since the war with the Continent had begun, it had been the only town spared the threat of the wardens’ harvests. Living in the shadow of the High Council came at a high price, but for those willing to pay it, Fume was the only place in Albion to feel truly safe. The tall memorial towers looked down over stone streets, built to house the High Council’s most trusted followers and their families, while the extensive underground maze of caverns and tombs were left to lawless groups of smugglers and scavengers who managed to scrape out a living down in the dark. The needs of the rich were served by