“Hangman,” by Erin Cashier
The full moon let me see the train coming. It raged up the path of the old tracks but it wasn’t on them. It wove across them, ignoring their boundaries, sweeping like a snake on sand. It was a long one. It’d be full of a lot of good things—nails, cotton, wood, corn. That pleased me. Made everything a little more worthwhile, as worthwhile as dying ever got.
“Kreisler’s Automata,” by Matthew David Surridge
The Prodigy scampered forward at once and sat before the pipe organ’s keyboards. Kreisler was with him. Together they began to play, calling the automata back to their city. Just as we had planned. And I, I ran after the Clockwork King, driven, as ever, by the thought of Olympia. For I had more that I would know.
“Dragon’s-Eyes,” by Margaret Ronald, from Issue #9
The farther they traveled, the more Skald’s old trade seemed to distort what he saw, forcing the faces he’d learned over the last few weeks to conform to the city vision. This one will break after a day, he would find himself thinking as the other drovers hailed him. This one is strong, but he favors his left knee; use the hammers first. This one will not break on his own, but hurt any member of his family and he’ll tell you anything just so you’ll stop.