The Half-Made World (8 page)

“Sir?”

He didn’t hear it at first.

“Sir?”

The gray-haired woman was calling him. He slumped back to the counter, numbly expecting further humiliation.

“Sir.” She sounded suddenly anxious, apologetic, and that made him stand up a little straighter. He leaned forward and snapped, “What?”

She handed him a short telegram. “Sir, I apologize, I . . .”

“Shut up,” he said.

He read the telegram. It didn’t take long, and it left him entirely confused.

“Kingstown,” he said. Far to the West—indeed, the Line’s westernmost point. At least two weeks away. The Angelus Engine was going east, which meant that he would have to wait for the Archway Engine to pass through, which would take him only as far as Harrow Cross, from where perhaps the Harrow Cross Engine would take him west to . . .

“My apologies, sir,” the woman said. “In all the rush, sir, I forgot—”

He smiled at her, baring bleached teeth. “What’s your name, woman?”

The telegram said:

FOR SUB-INVIGILATOR (THIRD) LOWRY OF THE ARMY OF

THE ANGELUS ENGINE:

KINGSTOWN STATION

SETTING ASIDE ALL OTHER BUSINESS

WITHOUT DELAY

It was unsigned.

CHAPTER 4

ANCIENT HISTORY

Creedmoor left the riverboat that same night. He leapt from the boat’s stern and landed knee deep in riverbank mud, among reeds and turtles and toads and snakes. He laughed and thought to himself,

—The glories of your service, once more, once again.

And his master’s voice answered,

—Yes, Creedmoor. Our glories. Go north. There, over those hills, through those trees.

—We have business there? Someone you want me to kill?

—Not necessarily. We need a fire, Creedmoor. Our Lodge burns, just as it always does, and you must hear this from all of us.

—I remember. Would you care to explain the urgency?

—You have been idle too long. Go north.

The boat’s lights slowly drew away down the river, leaving Creedmoor alone in the night. With a sigh he blinked, once and then again, until his eyes adjusted. A gray film settled on his vision, each detail of the world painfully clear and intense, each rustling reed knife-sharp. The night-sight: the vision of the Guns. For six years, Creedmoor had lived among crowds and lights, and he’d almost forgotten the world the way the Guns saw it.

Toads and snakes! He slogged forward through the reeds and muck, and frogs trilled and black kingfishers fled from him, calling their shrill rattling call.

—That way, Creedmoor.

The voice hurt—it buzzed, it scraped, it burned—and the Gun that housed his master throbbed like a wound at his hip—but the pain was becoming familiar again.

He clambered up the banks and over a green mound of earth, and when he turned around, the last sign of the riverboat was gone.

There was no refusing his masters when they Called. Creedmoor knew that very well.

When a man first entered the service of the Gun, his masters promised strength, freedom, glory—it was impossible at first to imagine ever wanting to saying no to them. For the first ten years or so, man and weapon would exist in a wild and exhilarating unity of purpose. That was how it had been for Creedmoor. He’d been lost and drifting when the Gun first took him—too old still to be a rootless boy—no honest job, no family, more creditors than friends. Every grand cause he’d taken up in his wanderings had failed him, one by one. Liberationism—the Church of the White City Virgins—the Knights of Labor—even the fucking
Smilers
. He’d been considering settling down somewhere and devoting himself to the serious study of alcoholism and despair. The Gun had raised him up and made him extraordinary. For ten years, he fought for them all across the many fronts of the Great War, he schemed and murdered and bribed and seduced and blackmailed for them, and he did it joyfully.

But the Gun’s Agents were wild and unruly, and sooner or later, they all began to resent their servitude. And then their masters would give them the Goad. It always happened—sooner or later. They seemed to take a certain satisfaction in it. Sometimes it had to be done twice or three times, rarely more often.

Creedmoor had spent all afternoon in the riverboat’s bar, drinking like a condemned man and flirting desperately with the waitresses. When night fell and his master said,

—Go now.

. . . he’d gone. He didn’t want the Goad.

He marched north through the dark of a gum tree grove, through thin bone-white trunks. They put him in mind of Hillfolk. Mud sucked at his boots. The throb of bullfrogs got on his nerves. He’d taken off his necktie, and his jacket was already torn. The ground sloped up sharply and he broke through the trees and out over the marshy plains.

—That way, Creedmoor.

—What do you want from me? Just tell me.

—You must hear it from all of us. We must visit our Lodge.

—This is an important errand? I’m honored.

—All our purposes are important. And you
are
honored.

Marshland gave way to grassland. He walked alone under a stark moon, breathing deeply in the cold air and—it was ridiculous! But there was no denying it—he began to feel the old joy again. Already he felt younger and wilder than he had for years. His legs were tireless. The Gun banged rhythmically against his hip, and his master said,

—That way. Why are you smiling?

—I would rather not serve you. But if I must, I might as well try to do it gladly.

—Good, Creedmoor. We like our servants joyful.

He came to the crest of a low rise, and jumped a fence of wood and wire. Now he was on grazing land—he saw the tracks and droppings of goats. In the distance on the edge of a hill, he saw the sharp outline of a farmhouse.

—There, Creedmoor.

—A farm.

—Yes.

—Are we borrowing eggs?

No answer. He jogged briskly uphill. A worn and stony trail led him up to the farmhouse. It was a ramshackle cabin of logs and mud and corrugated iron. Its roof raised up a weathervane in the shape of a bird, probably some local Baron’s crest. Its door was adorned with an upturned horseshoe. Some simple people believed that iron would keep away wild Hillfolk, on the theory that it reminded them of their brethren’s chains. Creedmoor doubted its efficacy even on Hillfolk, and certainly it was wasted on him.

His master said,

—Yes. In there. This will do. They have a fire.

There
was
a fire burning inside, and smoke at the chimney. Two dogs chained to a post in the ground outside started to whine and bark. Dogs didn’t like Creedmoor. They smelled the demon that rode him.

—Our kin will join us in fire. First kill the inhabitants.

With a sigh, Creedmoor knocked on the door.

The cabin was cluttered with pots and pans, with pelts and hooves and animal bones, with the worn wooden paraphernalia of farmer’s work. Two-tined forks and a battered old hoe. A churn? Creedmoor wasn’t sure what half of it was. He hadn’t done a day’s honest work in his life since he was a printer’s apprentice back in Lundroy.

A low fire smoldered in the corner. The cabin had one inhabitant, by the name of Josiah, a wiry old man, bent like a fishhook, with a beard like a goat’s.

Creedmoor didn’t kill him. Instead, though it made his master displeased—
because
it made his master displeased—Creedmoor decided to drink with him.

Josiah had some awful poisonous stuff in a wooden keg, which he sipped from a ladle, and had already been unsteady drunk when he opened the door.

“Come in,” he’d said. “Come in, I got nothing left to steal. My only daughter ran off to Jasper City with a swarthy fellow to be an actress, so you won’t be stealing her neither. Sit down! Have a drink.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Creedmoor sat. In the interests of caution, he refused Josiah’s brew—there were limits, after all, to the strength the Guns could give a man—and he drank from a bottle he’d stolen from the riverboat. Noticing a battered old rifle on the wall, and some tattered flags, Creedmoor asked if the old man had been a soldier, and soon they got talking about long-forgotten wars.

—Kill him and be done with it, Creedmoor.

—I don’t see the necessity.

The voice sulked and snarled and scraped in Creedmoor’s head. He ignored it.

Josiah had fought for the Delta Baronies thirty years ago, in the north, in a battle in which he still to this day believed was in support of an alliance with the young Red Valley Republic—though Creedmoor happened to know that the local Baron was acting secretly in furtherance of a scheme of the Guns. Creedmoor didn’t bother to set the old man straight. He made up some wild lies about his own military heroism. The old man swallowed it all up, eagerly, drinking and talking and talking . . . A lonely life out there, Creedmoor thought.

When the old man finally fell over in a dead drunk, Creedmoor carried him outside and left him with his barking dogs in the yard, and went back inside and shuttered the windows and bolted the door.

—We told you to kill him, Creedmoor.

—I didn’t see the necessity. Don’t worry, my bloodthirsty friend. I’m sure there’s killing to come.

—A sacrifice. Blood. To bring the Lodge here.

Creedmoor sighed, and rubbed his graying temples. Then he unbolted the door, stepped outside, and shot one of the dogs. As he bolted the door once again, he said:

—That will do.

—A dog. Undignified.

—I know your preferences. Do you care enough to punish me? Time’s wasting.

—Then stoke the fire.

—Good.

—We will remember this.

—Of course.

He heaped the fire with wood, and then with pelts, and then poured raw spirits onto it, and soon the cabin was dark with smoke, and red flames leapt high on the edges of Creedmoor’s hazy vision, and the fire roared and burning logs snapped with gunshot noises in a mad frantic rhythm. The Song of the Guns, the echo of their terrible voices. Creedmoor’s master said,

—Listen.