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doors, I followed Kerr, and sat down beside him.

CHAPTER 17
    W e were supposed to arrive at the border yesterday, but everyone—especially the People—knows that while Keran Berj may boast of the power of his land, the might of his army, and the efficiency of his train, he doesn’t control all the land; his army is nothing without his Guards and the certain death they bring, and the train runs more on the whims of its tracks than on Keran Berj’s will.
    Well into the second day of a trip that was supposed to be done in one, the washroom has rapidly become something no one wants to brave unless they must. The men go with the soldiers to the back car and “water the ground,” and the women take deep breaths and wade in to something fouler than even the worst animal pen.
    All the other women seem less bothered by the filth and smell of the washroom than I am, as if a soldier leering is far worse than squatting over a hole so clogged with waste that it is seeping onto the floor. Perhaps all of them are used to obeying Keran Berj’s ever-changing rules, to waiting in lines, to giving up everything he asks for his new statues or roads or whatever he wishes. Perhaps they truly only think of him.
    I don’t.
    The train begins the slow grinding noises that means it is stopping, and out the window I see shadows of buildings, tiny against the dust-colored ground. We are deep into the desert now, land no one wants to live in, but it is home to those Keran Berj wants isolated. Punished. Those who broke his laws are sent here, out into this hot, barren emptiness. Death comes for them but slowly, slowly.
    I suspect Keran Berj likes that.
    As the train lurches to a halt, people from the shimmer-haze of buildings stream out, red-faced from the sun as they shout through the windows.
    “Water! Fresh, clean well water! Nothing added, and cold too!”
    “Tea! Mint tea, soothing for the body and mind! ”
    “Dumplings! Fresh meat, fresh greens, boiled today! ”
    Windows on the train are pushed down, opened, and I watch the onion-smelling man bargain for a jar of water and a packet of dumplings, arguing furiously with a girl of no more than nine or ten, her pale skin peeling in strips down her face. I can see the angry red of her scalp through her bone-white hair, and touch my own in sympathy.
    I do not buy anything. These people, these window flies, are here because they followed Keran Berj blindly, and when he tossed them aside they were sent here. They were sent and they stay, living on their tiny, arid patches of land and doing nothing. They have no spirit.
    Kerr buys things, though. Always, at every stop, even the first ones we made when the City was still in sight, shining statues of Keran Berj still watching over us. He bought overpriced fried puffs of dough and the little meat patties that people shape with spoons bearing Keran Berj’s name, and fruit juices in cold, dripping cans printed with Keran Berj’s face. He bought from fat, slow men and women, people who had plenty, who clearly knew ways to get around the ration system and would praise Keran Berj with one side of their mouth while the other counted out coins. I wondered how many of them reported to Chris in one way or another.
    Now Kerr is buying water, mint tea, and two packets of dumplings, paying with coins that I still haven’t figured out where he carries and thanking each person as if their desperation doesn’t scream from the gleam in their eyes to their shaking, skinny hands and bodies.
    No one gets on the train here.
    No one gets off, either.
    No one would ever willingly get off here.
    Eventually, the soldiers get off the train and push the people pressing against the windows away. Kerr unwraps the dumplings before the train starts rattling away, eating them in quick, small bites. He eats more neatly than anyone I have ever known, even Mary, who could act so fine you would think she’d gone to the special school Keran Berj built for girls he thought would