Caleb and Martin had charted out the problems and possible solutions to their numerous problems. There was an actual chart involved; to Caleb's amusement, whose 'charts' usually were usually nothing more than drawings in the dirt. The two sat in the office, well past closing time, to try and sort out the issues. Martin's nasally voice grated on Caleb's every last nerve, and filled in with a desire to claw his ears off. Still, the man was decent enough, despite that.

"Well, if no one in town is sick, it must be something out in the cut itself." Martin murmured, half to himself, as he traced the trains path down the chalkboard.

Caleb leaned back into the chair, thoughtful. His day spent with the Escanor women had done nothing but cloud his head; it was hard to return to the harsh realities of the world with visions of Cornelia's blue eyes glinting in his head. Suddenly the sky seemed lighter and brighter to him every time his thoughts graced the young woman's visage, even as thunder rumbled overhead.

"Maybe the soil?"

Caleb cocked his head, and signed.

"I don't think you can get sick from dirt, Mister Tubbs."

Martin didn't even look back at him, interposing a map upon the board, smearing half his drawings.

"Well, you can, but I'm not sure if that what's going on here. You have to dig pretty deep for that sort of thing. And with all this mud they'd probably track it back here, you know once while I was studying back in Carhaiz, well actually I think I was at the University of Rieslink at the time…"

Martin always went quiet when he was in deep thought, he'd done it four times in this meeting alone. He could be in mid sentence, and just stop. It was a peculiar habit, but given the intense irritation brought on by his voice, it was not an unwelcome one. Caleb merely rubbed his eyes, and stretched his legs, sore from the riding the day before. He had never been very fond of horseback riding, he didn't trust the animals, but he was willing to brave them again if it meant seeing a certain blonde again. Both men were silent for a moment, caught in their own musings.

"And the food?" he finally cut in.

Martin looked at him, confused for a moment. He slowly set down his map, unsure of what he was doing with it in regards to the food problem it seemed.

"You could ask Mr. Escanor to try to negotiate a contract with the local ranchers, but he seems pretty tight with his purse lately. It would be easier to hire a third party, who could handle everything. But…"

"That's probably even more expensive. What is he thinking? These men can't work without proper food. Who are we in contact with currently?" Caleb asked, annoyed.

Martin started pliffering through his desk, his thick glasses nearly falling off his face as he did. Caleb shook his head, amazed by the sheer volume of papers that Martin controlled, although, perhaps controlled wasn't the correct word in regards to his management of his documents. The young man basically ran the railroad at this point, and though Caleb liked him, he thought that perhaps he might be better off simply charting their course. Caleb was perfectly happy and good managing men in the cut, and Martin was an excellent engineer, but he wasn't the best at running the office, his head too far off in the clouds.

"Ah, Laurents Lungs. It's the cheapest one we could get, it seems."

Caleb snorted. "Sounds like it. Laurents Lungs?"

"Don't ask." Martin muttered.

Caleb didn't. "Alright, who else do you know? That's good."

"The best are the Linn's. Aaron, umm, that's our cook, used to work for them. They provide the meat and cooks for operations like this. They used to be solely contracted by Vyamtium for their ships but they have branched out some recently."

"How much?"

"Way more than we have."

Caleb tapped his fingers on the table while nibbling at the inside of his lip. The rails main safe that Phobos had brought in sat a few feet from him, almost taunting him. The money they needed was surely in there, if he could just bust it open. Martin must have noticed his gaze, and quipped in an unusually playful fashion.

"Good luck, not even his wife knows the combination to that. We needed in back at the capital and had to wait a whole day for him to show back up."

The word capital rang in Caleb's mind, even stronger than his visions of Cornelia's pink coat from this morning.

"Taxes!" Caleb cried, "We could 'tax' the paychecks to pay for the food. It wouldn't have to be much if we did everyone's. That could be the Linn's monthly payment. They won't like it, but I bet they like it better than what they got."

The men who worked on the rail made more than any laboring man in the city; it was the only way to get people out here and stay. They may not appreciate the tax, it was true; but they needed food and it seemed the only way they would get it.

Martin looked impressed with him, and shook his head in agreement. "As long as your the one who tells them, not me." he chuckled.

"Till we get across the gorge, then we pin Phobos against the wall to use his bonus to pay for it as long as we get there on time."

"Good luck with that." Martin muttered.

Caleb ignored that, having no doubt that if he was still here when they crossed the gorge he would enjoy doing nothing more. He'd seen too many men bleeding in the dust to ever have any love for men like Phobos; who cared more about their pocket than their own people.

"And the other problem?" he asked, picking back up Martin's chalk covered map.

"Gah, I don't know. Look around the cut tomorrow if the men aren't trying to string you up for cutting their checks."

Caleb chuckled. He hadn't expected to like the rail, but there was something about it. Working towards something bigger than himself, bigger than any of them. After the war, after his father… He wasn't sure he would ever be free of the blood on his hands, but this. This rail could fix things, even if that was the opposite of its purpose. If people could just be with each other, learn from each other; maybe things really could change.

But none of that would come to fruition if they couldn't get across the gorge. They were twenty miles from the crossing point now; ten days till they were staring into the abyss. Ten days for Caleb to put a stop to the sickness, get them real food, and deal with the slowly mounting tension from his workers. Simple.

Well, admittedly, it would have been easier without a certain woman clouding into his thoughts. Cornelia Hale, Escanor (the thought made his blood boil) was not what he had been expecting in a town like this, married to a man like that. Sure, she hid it well, under pretty pink dresses and lush doll like makeup, but he could see under it. Cornelia was kind spirit, more so than perhaps she would even like to admit. He didn't know how anyone else couldn't it see, as he had the moment he'd set eyes on her. The way she watched over her sister-in-law, the way she walked through grass, careful not to trod upon any tiny blooms; it was all there hiding just under her gorgeous surface. In another life she would have been everything he could have ever wanted in a wife.

He wasn't surprised by his fixation of her; Caleb didn't invest himself in something without truly investing every bit of himself. His father had told him it was a valuable trait, but as he got older, he wasn't so sure. It had led to as much trouble as good, he found. Not...not that fact had ever stopped him.

"Alright then, I'll do that. I had better be off Mister Tubbs. Thanks."

Martin barely paid him any mind as he took his leave. He'd always heard the old sayings of people losing their unscrewed heads, but he'd never had anyone to apply it to until he met Martin. The man was trainwreck in charge of trains, something Caleb found highly amusing.

Haven was quiet now, almost eerily so, only fat drops of rains splatting into the almost dry mud, ruining the suns progress. No drunks wandered the street, and all the fires were long dead, only their glowing, sizzling embers left in their abandoned pits. The rail town always smelled like the back of a seedy bar to Caleb, like spilled alcohol and fresh blood, which was probably a pretty accurate depiction of the going ons in the town. The smell of blood was as familiar to him as the scent of fresh air was to some people.

And he could recognize the glint of a steel knife from miles away. It was like a replay of the night before; Aldarn stalking through the gaps of the tents, the gasp on the knife in his hand too tight, his knuckles white. The other man hadn't seen him this time, and Caleb was content to head the other way once more.

And yet his legs seemed to stop unwittingly. He signed; clearly the world, or fate, or some shit like that was trying to tell him something. Perhaps the Light thought enough blood had been spilled under his watch. He reached out his hand to the galhots shoulder, and tapped him gently. The other man nearly jumped out of his skin, the knife falling into the mud in a poor show of self-defense.

"What do you think you are doing?" Caleb asked, trying to stop himself from laughing as Aldarn fished frantically in the mud for his weapon.

"You!" he spat, pointing his newly found knife in Caleb's direction. "You had-"

"Listen here," Caleb started with him harshly, "if you intend to come at me with that little sticker you better know how to use it."

Aldarn stared at him with wide eyes, the knife shaking in his grasp though he refused to lower it. The rain beaded off his face, soaking through his thin clothes. Caleb could have disarmed the poor boy easily, but he stood his ground, hoping to reason with Aldarn.

"Do you know how?" he asked. "When you're fighting it's not so easy as stick them with the pointy end."

"He killed my father, and he's going to get away with it unless I do something." Aldarn's voice was as shaky as his grip.

Caleb's face fell, sure he had repeated those words in his own head many a time. Clearly the Light had quite the warped sense of humor. He would remember this when he finally met her at the final, bright light.

"You think you can take on Frost with a knife and a positive attitude? He'll crush you into paste before you get two stabs in. Unless you slit his throat in the night; that's how the smart ones do it. Just one deep cut across the neck, and out comes the blood and it doesn't stop till it's soaked through your clothes and-"

"That's enough!" he snapped, shaking the knife at Caleb. The soldier could offer him many an empty consultation that he himself did not believe, but in the end the man before him was not a killer, and Caleb didn't want him to be either. There were enough of that sort in the world.

"Let it go, you'll be better off for it. You start on that path, it ain't got no end. You'll walk it forever." Caleb told him, the irony of his words not lost on him; he knew the twists and turns of the way and the path ended for them only in the very thing they sought, death.

Aldarn glared at him, but he could see under the harshness of his gaze to the sorrow beneath it. He understood, as much as he wished he didn't. There was a tense silence for time, even though Aldarn had slowly sheathed his weapon. Caleb tried not to see himself in the watery eyes of the young man with only thoughts of blood in his mind, but he couldn't.

The galhot merely shook his head at Caleb, his shoulders tense and rigid, before turning back in the direction of his own camp. Whether he would return later, Caleb did not know or care to know. He'd done his part by whatever force had compelled him to stop. He chuckled darkly at the idea that perhaps he should heed his own words. Everyone knew that Caleb could never be counted on to follow any advice, not even his own.

The cut was a mess the next day; the mud thicker and deeper than it had been previously thanks to the nights rain. The men struggled to lay the wooden rail ties in the washed out gravel and thick sludge. The clouds still hung black in the sky and seemed even more rain was eminent. Caleb had no time to scout the land, or soil, or anywhere for the source of the sickness. He was knee deep in the mud as well, pushing the slippery ties into place and the iron a top it. He and Nigel were the on the front lies trying their best to lay the rails so they wouldn't get washed away from the rain if came any harder than it had before.

The men seemed in better spirits after his announcement, oddly enough. He had empathized the fact it was only temporary and the boss would soon be picking up the tab. And he would, one way or another, Caleb thought to himself as he had said it. Of that he had no doubt. Martin had already started the process of contacting the Lins that morning, via telegraph to Longora and hopefully he would have good news for him once he returned after work. He could use some.

"We should be making five miles a day on flat prairie like this." Napoleon told them as they struggled to their first mile of the day, a few hours past midday.

Caleb nearly let the beam he was holding crush Nigel's fingers as he sprang up to confront the other walking boss.

"I'm sorry, do you have any suggestions?" he snapped. Napoleon barely flinched at his harsh tone, and merely twisted his lips in irritation.

"You're the foreman, you need to be out of the mud and dealing with the bigger problems."

"Like what? I thought making time was our biggest concern, you seem to think so after all."

The other man didn't budge, but instead gestured over the galhots. Something Caleb was already very tired of people doing.

"For one, they ain't got no walking boss, you need to pick one. Everything slows down without someone at the top."

Caleb groaned; he had been trying to avoid that matter. Half his men wanted a man from outside the crew to keep them 'in line' after the rock incident. Furthermore, he had no idea who to pick from inside the crew if choose to do so. It was a delicate situation with no easy or apparent answer.

"Fine," he snarled. There was no point delaying it any longer, he supposed. He shook as much the murk off his dark denim pants as he could, before pushing past Napoleon to make his way across the cut.

The galhots were away from the main of the crew, huddled in a group at the edge of the cut. They were on a drink break by the looks of it, through he couldn't see their water bucket. He could feel tiny drops of rain starting to bounce off his hat. It hardly mattered now; his clothes already cold, wet, and heavy.

He was almost upon them, their faces grim at his approach, when some distant light in the back of his mind lit up. Old memories stirred in his mind from a time outside a fortified city, so grand no army could ever topple her, and yet with an army outside desperate to get them to surrender. A tall man with dark purple skin was heaving their water from the edge of the nearby run off from the lake. They were a good five miles from the lake itself but the stream was always well fed. It was easier than lugging water from their tower back in town, they must have thought. Caleb could barely stop the laughter that was bubbling in his throat; how could they have been so stupid?

"You!" he gestured to the man carrying the water, "put that down. It's not safe."

"Wha?" he said, his thick accent stating he was clearly not well-versed in the Queen's tongue.

"The water," he said, lightly tugging the bucket out of the man's thick, calloused hands. "It's got the taint."

Aldarn hopped up from his circle of companions, Caleb hadn't even noticed him at first, Aldarn was much smaller than most of his fellows.

"From what?"

"I intend to find out." Caleb said, eying the path of the stream. He could see the twinkle of the water for a mile or so before it disappeared behind a lone patch of trees on the plains.

Aldarn looked down at his fellow workers, but they had all developed a sudden interest in plucking plants from the ground or tracing in the mud. Caleb gestured for Aldarn to follow him; if for no other reason than if he met trouble the galhots would at least come looking for him.

Caleb had never liked silences; but never seemed to have the words to fill them. That however, had never stopped him from trying. He was nervous sort of talker, prone to chatting the ears off of half dead men as he carried them away from battle. Which in retrospect, probably wasn't helping his 'strong silent type' persona. So, he was a little surprised when Aldarn started speaking first.

"What do you think it is?" he asked, sounding like a much different person than he had in the alley the night before. His voice was lighter, younger, like it finally matched his actual age. Caleb felt a wave of envy before he quickly stamped it down. Whatever was left of his youth was long abandoned on a medical wagon in the South of Carhaiz providence.

"With any luck it's just a Filney deer that died too close to the stream," Caleb answered. Aldarn murmured something behind him about the state of his luck and where it could shove itself. Caleb agreed.

However, luck, as usual, was indeed not on their side. They smelled it before they saw it, not very strong, but a potent odour such as death tends to linger. As the men rounded the small grove of trees, they found what was left of them.

It wasn't unusual for families to try to make the trek across the great plains to either side of Meridian, and it wasn't unusual for them to never make it either. Indeed, it seemed the erstwhile family of three had met the Kahedrin upon their journey; and they hadn't made a favorable impression.

What was left of a large man was halfway rotting into the water, while the bloated corpse of his wife was caught further downstream by a toppled tree. Their son, Caleb assumed, who looked well into his manhood by what was left, was pinned against a tree with several arrows protruding from his chest. Caleb could only shake his head in shame at the scene, the dead family with their meager belongs strew about, anything of value taken.

"Come on, let's get these two out of the water at least."

Aldarn turned an even darker shade of green, but waded off after the woman's corpse without complaint. Caleb was impressed by his gall, but it quickly faded as he tried to pick up the rotting pieces of the man. He could feel his breakfast trying to make its way back up his stomach as he performed his task.

"Mister Hansen, look!"

Aldarn had placed the woman's body upon the shore, but grasped in his hand was a thick brass locket. He handed the jewelry to Caleb, who was momentarily confused. It wasn't worth anything, he thought, it wasn't even silver or nickel. Aldarn, picking up on his confusion, popped the locket open in his hand, revealing a waterlogged, but still legible picture.

It was obviously their erstwhile family, the man dressed in finery, his hand on his much smaller and lighter wife, who wore a serious face but was still beautiful in her sharpness. Below them sat their son, a dark, handsome man with an easy-going grin and thick ponytail and besides him...a girl, certainly his sister, with the same dark skin and hair, and soft doe-brown eyes. Caleb glanced up at the scene, three bodies and no signs of a fourth. They had been laying for some time, at least two weeks, and any tracks they might have followed had long been washed away.

"They must have took her." he said to Aldarn. Aldarn merely cocked his head, looking very much like a ugly, bald puppy.

"Why take her and not the mother?"

That was...a good point. "How could one little girl escape an ambush like this?" he asked.

"We have to look for her." Aldarn said, scanning the horizon. There wasn't a whole lot of places to hide on the plain, Caleb noted. He very much doubted that she had escaped, and if she had where would she go?

His companion however, seemed to be one step ahead of him, his gaze many, many, miles away to the barely visible other side of Griffix Lake, where there was some cover in the form of foothills and a sparse forest. He would feel his stomach lurch in excitement. If there was one thing Caleb could not resist, it was people in danger. It was why he joined the army, and the one good thing that he still had left from it.

"Alright, alright," he said, more to himself than Aldarn. "Let's go back to Haven, get some horses and supplies. We look for two days, if we don't find her or any trace of her by then we come back and forget about the whole deal."

Aldarn nodded in agreement. Caleb was surprised at his willingness to come along on such an endeavor. The thought that he should have asked someone else to join him crossed his mind; but anyone else he might have picked were walking bosses and needed back at the cut. Clutching the locket tight in hand, he and his companion made their way back to Haven to start their quest.

Phobos Escanor was not having a good morning.

"You're telling me, my foreman of barely a week has run off on some ridiculous snipe hunt for some missing woman, without bothering to even ask me?"

Martin looked very much like he wished he were anywhere else. Papers trembled tremulously in his white knuckled grip.

"And has changed my sustenance contracts, with your help, without my approval?"

The younger man nodded, his blue eyes watery behind his thick rimmed glasses. The desire to hit Martin had never been greater than at that moment. He felt the muscles in his arm twitch even as the idea entered his mind. However, memories of the last man he'd slapped swamped his mind, and a potent bitterness swept any thoughts of acting out his musings. His unbidden memories however, only served as fuel to his already dangerously out of control fire.

Phobos grasped his chief engineer by his stained cavat and slammed his head into the table, his eye line in point of the place on the map Martin promised him they'd be at by now. The man cried out under his grasp, but didn't try to struggle.

"And," he pushed Martin's head into the table even harder in emphasis; his eyes were leaking tears now, "we are nowhere where we need to be!"

Phobos rarely raised his voice, he usually didn't need to to be heeded, but ever since he had started this venture he'd found himself yelling more and more; sometimes at nothing. Which did nothing but frustrate him more. He let go of Martin with a snarl, and the young man felt to the floor with a heavy thump. Phobos turned back to Napoleon, who had forgotten was there in his rage.

"Find me someone else." he ordered. However, it seemed mutiny had spread across all the ranks.

"I don't think that's the wisest idea, the men already respect him and I think he has-"

Whatever grasp he'd had on his temper slipped from him then.

"Get out! Both of you!"

He was so furious his voice cracked as he spat the words out. Napoleon quickly helped Martin to his feet, and ushered both of them out of the office and into the rain. The door slammed door with an clank and then the office was silent save the rain dropping unto the tin roof.

Phobos raked his fingers through his fashionably cropped hair. He almost wished Cornelia was here so he could twist his fingers through her long golden hair, but she offered resistance when he pulled and wrenched, batting his hands away not at all like the dutiful lover she liked to present herself as.

The irony that in another world, or a different time he might have respected his new foreman's actions was not lost upon him. Had Caleb done such bold moves on his behalf he might have even admired him, instead he felt a deep loathing set in for a man he barely knew. And that was becoming the least of his worries.

Escanor Rail had a new head of directors, elected by men he thought had been in his pocket. Of course with empty pockets came well...emptier pockets. He'd received a crisp, white letter from one Nerissa Crossnic that fine morning, informing him of her new position. He knew precious little about the recently widowed woman, save her investment habits and huge inheritance from her second husband. That would have been enough to worry him, without her inquiries into the suspicious lack of funds in the railroads coffers and invitation to return to the capital to discuss it at his leisure.

She must have known. Ambitious people like them, they wouldn't take such a position unless there was something to be gained. Indeed, the last cent of railroad funds had been spent acquiring a Thebite mine so he wouldn't have to pay anyone else for the fuel needed to power his trains. If he was going to build this empire he would do it his way, or not at all. He'd thrown the letter in the fire, something he was doing with more and more letters he noticed. If she wanted to come snatch the rail from his hands she would have to come do it herself. He would not come to her and justify himself before some silly woman.

Perhaps, by the time she decided to come investigate for herself, they would cross the gorge, and the empty rail safe would be full seemed unlikely, given his current luck and he couldn't leave his fate to such a gamble...but where to get more money? He cast a glance at the map, where Martin's tears marked their current position. He tasted blood in his mouth, he'd been chewing at inside of his cheeks in distress.

He'd banked too much on them making good time, he should have known better, he chastised himself harshly. He would get himself out of this mess before the Crossnic woman and her turncoat 'board of directors' came to steal all he had built. He always did, after all.

AUTHORS NOTE;

Chapter's a little shorter than usual, but it seemed a good place to stop. Thank you again to everyone who has reviewed and/or just taken the time to read my story. It is very much appreciated.

RoR out.