A train called The Vantage has stopped — three weeks stalled in the wilds, its engine dead, its food running low, and bandits gathering on the dead stretches the way other people gather a harvest. The Vantage runs on the timetable: rank, ration, and every right pegged to the hour and the mile. But a train that cannot move is a train whose whole constitution has quietly stopped meaning anything. Elliot is sent to help mend an engine. The thing coming apart fastest is not the engine.