The Half-Made World (42 page)

She took the last of her tonic; cupping her shaking hands to keep the rain out, she drank down the dregs of the vial. She risked overdose, but she did not expect to survive the rains anyway. For some uncountable blissful period of time, she felt nothing at all; she believed she was following Creedmoor, but she could not be sure of it; the rains were gentle and their purpose clear and sane.

But that was the last of it. As it left her body, her joints racked with pain and her head burned; Liv lay in a cave, while the rains pounded outside, and the last of that sickly-sweet poison sweated out of her crawling skin. It seemed that Creedmoor stood over her and wiped the sweat from her brow. It seemed that her mother was there, holding her, whispering to her, scolding her for her weakness. Her very good friend Agatha from the Faculty of Mathematics offered to make her green tea, and stirred poison into it with a dirty knife. The cave’s walls crawled and glimmered with the Folk red markings, and it seemed she was watched, from the cave’s far shadows, from beneath a vast and wild black mane, by curious alien eyes in a deathly white face. She thought she was going to die, but she did not.

When she returned to herself, she was
not
in a cave, and perhaps never had been; she was slogging along through mud, Creedmoor’s arm around her shoulder as he pulled her and pushed the General and yelled, “Faster, Liv! They’re closing.”

It was still raining.

A Line patrol blundered upon them.

They were slogging ankle deep across a plain of seemingly infinite mud and rain in search of shelter. Creedmoor forged on ahead, shoulders down, the General in his arms. Liv stumbled after him, screaming, “Creedmoor!”

He screamed back, “Keep moving!” One had to scream to be heard over the rains.

“Where are we
going,
Creedmoor?”

“How would I know? Forward. West or east or back, which way’s the damn sun? Day or night? How would
I
know, just—”

And the patrol just stepped out of sheets of thundering rain ahead of them as if from behind a curtain. More than a dozen Linesmen in black uniforms rain-plastered to their bodies. They marched heads-down. When they saw Creedmoor, their mouths fell open with surprise and exhaustion. Creedmoor looked briefly stunned, too, as if the rains dulled even his keen predator’s senses.

He shoved the General back into Liv’s arms. The Linesmen lifted their rifles, struggling against the rains’ downward force. She pulled the General down into the mud, where she lay prone beside him.

When she looked up again, Creedmoor was gone. She heard his Gun fire once, twice. Between washes of rain, she saw a red flash and something moving. The Linesmen shouted in panic. She saw bodies dressed in black falling—one, two, three, four—how many of them were there? The mud went slick and black with blood; it was quickly washed away. The General kept trying to stand. He was barking out nonsense orders—calling out, “To me! Forward for the Republic! Strike at their flank; damn their cannon!” Liv tried to hold him down for a moment; then she just let him go. He fell over anyway in the rain-slick blood-slick mud and lay on his back shouting orders at the sky. The noise of the Linesmen’s rifles was tinny and rattling next to the deep thunder of Creedmoor’s Gun. Then it stopped altogether.

She was crying. Rain washed mud and tears from her face.

Creedmoor pulled her to her feet. “Keep moving.”

The rains ceased without warning. The sky parted and sun burst across the world. Everything shone so bright, it seemed it could catch fire.

They were in a wide and deep valley. Before them the ground rose through bands of green and brown scrub, becoming a great hillside like a woman lying on her side, above which the sun burned through white clouds.

Beneath Liv’s feet, the mud was already drying, turning red, cracking.

Creedmoor shaded his eyes, looked around. The air was beautifully clear, and it was apparent that there were no Linesmen for miles around.

“West,” he said. “Soon we won’t be able to trust the sun out here, but for now that way’s west, so: Forward.”

He lifted the General into his arms and set off up the hill.

Again they stood on the side of a hill, among pines and hemlock, overlooking a valley. Below them, the hill was a slope of flinty scree that slid down into a dry riverbed. How was it possible that the riverbed was dry after those rains? This was a strange place.

Something sparkled and glinted in the sun, all along the riverbed far below: It might have been gold; it might have been diamonds.

The other side of the valley was a sweep of dense and dark forest. Liv could name none of the trees. She was dreadfully hungry and weak and she believed she was developing a fever.

Creedmoor scanned the distant forests, one hand shielding his eyes from the sun, the other on his Gun. “They say,” he remarked conversationally, “that if one presses far enough to the west, there is a sea. The handful of madmen who’ve pushed out this far report it. A sea. Just as the ancient far East is bounded by old seas, and cooled and gentled by their lapping waters.”

Creedmoor was not hungry or weak or sick; he never was.

“But the
western
sea is a mad and stormy thing. Indeed, those few who have seen it say that it is hard to know where the land ends and the sea begins, so changeable and stormy and foggy and swampy and generally foul the land out there is, so windswept and glacier-carved into sealike waves. And the sky, they say, cascades and pulses in green-blue waves of starlight, space-light. And the sea itself is cold and steams and rages like fire. I should think it is very haunted indeed. The world that is not yet made is where demons are born. The world unravels at its edge. But fortunately, I do not think we shall have to go so far. I believe our pursuers are lagging very far behind and soon . . . Aha!”

His Gun was in his hand and he fired at the far hillside.

He turned to Liv and smiled. “A deer! Fat days are here again, Liv! You stay here with our elderly friend. Talk things over with him. Remember your vocation, Liv—we want this poor old man up and walking and spilling his secrets.”

“I can’t, Creedmoor.”

“Liv. Listen closely. This is what you are here to do. For all I know, it may be why you were put on this earth. What he knows might mean the end of the Great War.
Peace,
Liv. They’ll build statues to you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Creedmoor.”

“Excellent. I’m glad we’ve got that sorted out. Get to work. I’ll return shortly.”

He picked up his pack and rummaged for knives and rope.

“It’s
miles
away. What if some other animal steals it?” Liv hated the desperation in her voice, but she was so
hungry
.

He grinned. “What animal would dare?”

Then, hand on his head to keep his hat on, he slid down the scree. He went fast, recklessly, like a much, much younger man.

When he was far enough away—he was
never
too far away to see her, but she hoped he wasn’t looking—Liv scrabbled on the ground for sharp flints. She snapped away a dry branch from the nearest tree. It was stiff; she was horrified by how weak she had become. She sat with her back to the valley and tried to sharpen a weapon from the wood. It snapped in her hands. She was too weak to cry.

She composed herself.

She sat cross-legged in front of the General, and she held his face—gently, firmly—so that his eyes were on her.

“Secrets, Creedmoor says. Spilling your secrets. What do they want from you, you poor old man?”

His eyes wandered again and she let go. She sighed.

“You must have been a very great General indeed, if they want you so badly.”

Liv sat before the General and considered how to proceed.

“In the rain, you were giving orders.”

He began to mutter nonsense.

“Wait; hush; listen. What did you remember? Where were you? What’s still in there?”

He did not stop muttering.

With some self-consciousness, she sat straight; stiffened her spine and squared her thin shoulders; deepened her voice as much as she could; and asked, “What are your orders, Sir?”

Was that a flicker of interest, of recognition?

He began to urinate.

Creedmoor came running noisily up the scree slope, the deer slung over his shoulders. Its pelt was a striped red-black that Liv thought—not that she any great experience with deer—rather unusual. Creedmoor threw it down and rubbed his bloody hands with glee.

“Any progress with our friend, Liv? Has he said anything interesting?”

“No, Mr. Creedmoor. Do you expect results in an hour?”

“Call me Creedmoor. And you’re quite right; early days yet.”

Creedmoor made a fire. He looked at the General’s rheumy eyes and reached into his pack, from which he produced a vial that Liv recognized as fever medicine stolen from the House. He dribbled it down the old man’s throat. After a little thought, he offered the vial to Liv. She dosed herself with shaking hands.

Creedmoor drew a knife from his boot. “Well?” He waved it vaguely at her and at the trees. “Gather firewood.” He dug the knife point in under the deer’s hide and began tearing.

She went into the trees to gather firewood. It was a strange and unpleasant experience, about which she was too tired to think clearly.

She brought back dry branches and stacked them crosswise, according to his instructions.

He butchered the animal in front of her. Her mouth watered at the grisly sight. In a warm conversational tone, he explained just how it was done. He cut the meat into thin strips, some of which he hung to dry in the sun over the spiny branches of a tree on the edge of the slope, and some of which he cooked.

“To absent friends,” he said as he gnawed on a strip of flesh. “My friends are all monsters and they should have been hanged long ago; nevertheless, I shall mourn them. Not because they deserve to be mourned, but because I do not deserve it either, but I hope they’ll miss me when I go.”

His head was bowed. “So: Black Roth. Dagger Mary. Stephen Sutter. Keane. Hang-’Em-High Washburne. Drunkard Cuffee. Abban the Lion. Dandy Fanshawe.” His voice caught on the last name.