by Felix Gilman
Maggfrid came crashing into her office, late in the afternoon. He never understood to knock. The shock made her spill ink on her writing desk. He was in tears. “Doctor—you’re leaving?”
She put down her pen and sighed. “Maggfrid, I told you I was leaving last week. And the week before that.”
“They told me you were leaving.”
“I told you I was leaving. Don’t you remember?”
He stood there dumbly for a moment, then hurried over and began to mop at her desk with his sleeve. She put her hand on his arm to stop him.
He was nearly a giant. His huge hands were scarred from a multitude of small accidents—he didn’t have the sense to look after himself properly. Someone who didn’t know him might have found him terrifying—in fact, he was gentle and as loyal as a dog. Maggfrid was her first subject and, in a manner of speaking, her oldest friend.
Maggfrid’s condition was congenital. His own blood had betrayed him. Sterile, he was the last of a line of imbeciles. Liv had found him sweeping the stone floors of the Institute in Tuborrhen, where she herself had spent some years in a high white-walled room, in a fragile state, after the death of her mother. He’d been kind to her then. Later, when she was stronger, he’d been happy to be her test subject; he was always simple and eager to please. He would answer questions for hours with his brow furrowed with effort. He bore even the more intrusive physical examinations without complaint. There were three ugly scars across his bald head, and a burn from a faulty electroplate, but he didn’t mind. She couldn’t heal him—she had quickly realized he was beyond mending—but he’d provided subject matter for a number of successful monographs, and in return she’d found him work sweeping the floors of August Hall.
“Doctor—”
“You’ll be fine, Maggfrid. You hardly need me anymore.”
He began mopping up the ink again. “Maggfrid, no . . .”
She couldn’t stop him. She watched him work. He scrubbed with intense determination. It occurred to her that she could get up, walk away, lock the office behind her, and he might remain standing there, implacably scrubbing in the darkness. It was a sad thought.
Besides, she might need a bodyguard; she would need someone to carry her bags. It was even possible that fresh air, adventure, new scenery would do him good. It was certainly what she needed.
She put a hand on his arm again. “Maggfrid: Have you ever wanted to travel?”
It took nearly a minute for his big pale face to break into a grin; and then he lifted her from behind her desk and spun her like a child, until the room was a blur and she laughed and told him to let her down.
She spent her very last day at the Faculty on the banks of the river. She sat next to Agatha on an outstretched blanket. They fed the swans and discussed the shapes of clouds. Their conversation was a little forced, and Liv wasn’t at all sorry when it drifted away, and for a while they sat in silence.
“You’ll have to a buy a gun,” Agatha said quite suddenly.
Liv turned to her, rather shocked, to see that Agatha was smiling mischievously.
“You’ll have to buy a gun, and learn to ride a horse.”
Liv smiled. “I shall come back quite battle-scarred.”
“With terrible stories.”
“I shall never speak of them.”
“Except when drunk, when you’ll tell us all stories of the time you fought off a dozen wild Hillfolk bandits.”
“Two dozen! Why not?”
“No student will ever dare defy you again.”
“I shall walk with a limp, like an old soldier.”
“You will—” Agatha fell silent.
She reached into her bag and took out a small red pocket-sized pamphlet, which she handed solemnly to Liv.
According to its cover, it was A Child’s History of the West, and it had been published in somewhere called Morgan Town, in the year 1856.
Its pages were yellow and crumbling—hardly surprising, given that it was several years older than Liv herself. Its frontispiece was a black-and-white etching of a severe-looking gentleman in military uniform, with dark features, a neat white beard, a nose that could chop wood, and eyes that were somehow at once fierce and sad. He was apparently General Orlan Enver, First Soldier of the Red Valley Republic and the author of the Child’s History. Liv had never heard of him.
“I’m afraid it’s the only book I could find that says anything about where you’re going at all,” Agatha said.
“This is from the library.”
Agatha shrugged. “Steal it.”
“Agatha!”
“Really, Liv, it’s hardly the time for you to worry about that sort of thing. Take it! It may be useful. Anyway, we can’t send you off with nothing but that horribly ugly watch.”
Agatha stood. “Be safe,” she said.
“I will.”
Agatha turned quickly and walked off.
Grunting, Maggfrid heaved up Liv’s heavy cases onto the back of the coach. The horses snorted in the cold morning air and stamped the gravel of August Hall’s yard. The Faculty was still sleeping——apart from the coach and the horses and a few curious peacocks, the grounds were empty. Liv and Agatha embraced as the coachman stood by, smoking. Liv hardly noticed herself boarding the vehicle—she’d taken four drops of her nerve tonic to ensure that fear would not sway her resolve, and she was therefore somewhat distant and numb.
The coachman cracked the whip and the horses were away. The die was cast. Liv’s heart pounded. Balanced on her lap were the Child’s History of the West, the ugly golden watch, and a copy of the most recent edition of the Royal Maessenburg Journal of Psychology. She found all three of them rather comforting. Maggfrid sat beside her with a frozen smile on his face. Gravel crunched, the lindens went rushing past, the Faculty’s tall iron gates loomed like a mountain. Agatha gathered up her skirts and ran a little way after the coach, and Liv waved and in doing so managed to drop her copy of the Journal, which fluttered away behind her down the path. The coachman offered to stop, but she told him keep going, keep going!
CHAPTER 2
A GENTLEMAN OF LEISURE
Riverboat, due south from Humboldt, through night and red rushes, through neutral territories. Long-legged herons stalked the banks. The riverboat came as a roaring invader into their silent muddy world: its vast dark weight and the golden light and swirling thumping piano music pouring from its windows sent the birds panicking into flight like shots had been fired. . . .
But it was only a gambling boat, a private enterprise chartered out of the Baronies of the Delta, three decks of music and drinking and whores and con men and business travelers and suckers. It carried no cannon. Its great paddle wheel clattered and splashed. (The Folk who turned it were discreetly locked away below.) It was painted scarlet and blue, rimmed with brass, flying a variety of flags; it was quite pretty in the torchlight. A young man in pinstripes vomited over the side while his girlfriend picked his pocket. Six blond and prosperous farmers staggered out of the bar arm in arm, singing a song about fighting. The floor of the bar was bright with spilt whiskey and broken glass, and the pitch and yaw of the boat sent a constant whirl of men and women around and around in drunken circles about the roulette wheel and the dice tables and the knots of men clutching tightly to their cards and their little heaps of coins and worn, sweaty banknotes.
Everyone was talking much too loudly about sex, about business, about crime, about war—and about plans for when the War was over, which always got a laugh. A man with a quick mind and sharp hearing could have picked up valuable intelligence—and Creedmoor had a passably quick mind and the ears of a fox. But he was retired, and happily so, and so he shut his ears and let the babble wash over him. He liked to be among people; he liked the noises and smells of crowds. This wasn’t peace. There was no peace and there never would be. But it was close enough.
He sat in a half-dark corner playing cards with strangers. His back was to the wall, just in case.
The table was playing the Old Game, with the suits they used in the towns of the Delta—rifles, shovels, wolves, and bones. A game of bluff and cunning: Creedmoor excelled at it. There was a rich-looking man in a green necktie and glasses, a less rich-looking man in a brown suit with a bald head, and a stupid-looking young man called Buffo who’d joined the boat that morning from a one-street town called Lezard, with bloodstains on his boots and a burlap sack full of clinking gold coins. No questions asked. Buffo balanced a black-haired green-eyed girl on his lap, who seemed to like it when Creedmoor smiled at her. Everyone was substantially less rich than they’d been at the start of the evening, except for Creedmoor and the girl, who appeared to be a neutral party.
Creedmoor had joined the boat two days ago in a town called Humboldt, where some old enemies had spotted him. He’d been sitting on a painted bench on Humboldt’s waterfront, watching the young women go by in their blue and green summer dresses, when his peace had been shattered by the sound of Engines and the smell of smoke. Even before he saw it, he sensed the black staff car coming down the dirt road behind him. Linesmen. He jumped up, walked quickly but calmly down the pier, and bought a ticket for the first boat out. In the old days, he might have stayed and fought, but he was tired of fighting. Anyway, he was only passing through Humboldt on a detour to avoid the Shrike Hills, which, when he’d last been that way thirty years ago, were full of drowsy little villages. Now, to his great annoyance, the hills were being flattened and built over by the Line—farms replaced by factories, forests stripped, hills mined and quarried to feed the insatiable holy hunger of the Engines.
He was happy enough on the boat. He hadn’t been traveling anywhere in particular anyway. It was six years since he’d last heard the Call. It was impossible to avoid his masters or escape them, but he did his best to make himself appear both idle and useless to them—a burnt-out case. It appeared to be working well enough. He regarded himself, provisionally, as a free man.
More money changed hands. The rich-looking gentleman in the necktie gave a sad laugh and tossed his last crumpled bills in the air. Creedmoor deftly snatched them.
“You’re a devil, sir.”
“Not tonight,” Creedmoor said, and smiled.
Creedmoor’s hair was a little thin, brown turning gray; his face was red and lined and rough. He looked like he came from Lundroy peasant stock, which he did. If you saw him smile, you might think he was still a young man; if you saw him sometimes when he thought he was alone, he might look a hundred years old. The three men who sat across the table from him behind rapidly diminishing piles of money had seen a simple old man. Now, Creedmoor judged, at least two of them were considering drawing a weapon on him. He hoped they wouldn’t be so foolish.
Creedmoor’s hoard of bills and coins grew, big and glittering and beautiful. The rich-looking gentleman staggered drunkenly off, cursing in disgust. The black-haired green-eyed girl moved herself from Buffo’s lap to Creedmoor’s.
Buffo sneered in disgust and spat on the floor.
“I’ll ask you not to do that,” Creedmoor said. “Lowers the tone.”
Buffo’s bloodshot eyes narrowed and his leg started to twitch. He appeared not to have slept in days. He stared at his cards and muttered old fool and whore, the latter presumably addressed to the girl. He repeated it: whore, whore, whore. The girl laughed, high and cheerful. Creedmoor liked her. She had an unfortunate black wen on her lip but was otherwise lovely, and Creedmoor put his arm around her and was happy.
When he woke the next morning in his cabin, his head hurt so dreadfully that for a moment he thought his old masters were Calling to him. That was how they announced their presence: with pain, and noise, and the smell of blood and fire. He began to plead and make excuses. He was answered with silence, and it quickly became clear that he was experiencing nothing more extraordinary than a hangover.
The boat lurched. The girl was squeezed into his bunk, and her arm with its fine dark hairs was draped across his own scarred chest. Her green eyes looked at him curiously. He hoped he hadn’t spoken out loud.
He passed the day in a deck chair with a romantic novel. He pulled his hat down over his eyes and warmed in the sun like an elderly alligator. The river shone white behind and blue ahead, and the broad plains were baked brown and encircled in the distance by dark pines and blue mountains. A few farms, no towns. No Line—not yet. The plains were a hazy emptiness, uninhabited land, a vast and vague beauty, not yet shaped or Made by anyone’s dreams or nightmares.
He ate no lunch. Sometimes he forgot.
A shadow fell over him and woke him. It was the girl, blocking the orange haze of the afternoon sun. She looked pale and nervous, and Creedmoor quite forgot what he’d liked about her. He also forgot her name.
“John,” she said, “I’ve been thinking. . . .”
John was his real name. He didn’t recall giving it to her, though admittedly he’d been drinking lately. He sure didn’t see how it was any business of hers to be using it. His face set into a scowl.
“This boat stops in Aral,” she said. “And from there it’s not too far north to Keaton, or even Jasper. And there’s work on the stage there, and everyone says I’m pretty enough. And I know you got money. And I know you’re smart, smarter than any of these boys here, and I don’t know what you do for money, but I know it ain’t regular, and what I mean is if you wanted to travel together . . .”
“I’m not going to Keaton. Or Jasper.”
“Wherever, then. I’m sick of working this boat, John. I want to see the world.”
“The world’s a bloody awful place,” he said. “This boat is as good as it gets.” And he pulled his hat down again, so he wouldn’t have to see the hurt look in her eyes.
Once she’d stormed off, he went back to his novel. He saw a happy ending coming, but he didn’t believe in it.
He dozed in his deck chair. He woke again in the evening, disturbed by the distant whine of ornithopters. Every one of his old muscles tensed, and a sour taste of fear rose into his mouth. He lifted his hat just enough to examine the red evening sky; otherwise, he was still. After a few moments he saw them, miles off, six black specks moving in formation high over the plains. Advance scouts for the Line. They bled smoke—they scored black lines across the sky. The whine became a drone then a clattering whir of iron wings as they passed overhead, and Creedmoor quietly pulled his hat down over his face. The drone faded again and he untensed.
He ate alone in his room, worrying boiled meat from the bone with his teeth.
Buffo put on a kind of show in the bar that night. The young man had slicked back his hair and pressed his suit and cleaned the blood from his boots, and looked quite handsome. He leaned on the bar and shouted over the noise of the boat. The black-haired girl was back with him. He was throwing money around and telling stories of how he’d won it—as he drank and swayed, his story shifted, so that first he’d been a famous gambler, and then he’d made his fortune running rifles to the besieged towns of Elmo Flats past the blockades of the Line, and then he’d robbed a bank in Jasper City, and then he’d invented a wonderful new headache cure but been cheated out of the patent by a cunning little Northerner.
If Creedmoor was any judge, every word of it was a lie, but Buffo’s audience only grew throughout the evening. Creedmoor drank alone. Sometimes Buffo caught Creedmoor’s skeptical eye and scowled, and Creedmoor smiled, and Buffo bared his teeth and lost the thread of his latest story. The girl seemed angry with Creedmoor, too. And those ’thopters had quite soured Creedmoor’s mood.
Buffo began a new story.
“. . . and that was where . . . that summer . . . after the, you know, after I was saying how I robbed that bank in Keaton, I mean Jasper, and . . . can I trust you all? Come closer, can I trust you to keep a secret? I fucking well ought to be able to, all the drinks I bought you . . . that was where I got this.”
The boy fumbled drunkenly in his jacket. He pulled out a small and cheaply made revolver, snagged it o
n his tie, and dropped it on the floor. He recovered it and then slammed it down on the table.
He said, “Yeah.” People drew nervously away from him.
“That is what you think it is,” he said, loosening his tie.
“Let me tell you. Let me tell you. They don’t recruit just anyone. Only the bravest and wildest are chosen by the Gun to be its Agents. They’d had their eye on me for months, I reckon—maybe since I did that bank in, in Shropmark, maybe since I broke out of the jail in White Plains, maybe since the shooting in . . . but that’s another story. Don’t touch that weapon. Don’t none of you even fucking look at it. There’s a demon in that weapon. A god in it. In me. That was—I was in a bar in, in that town, just by myself, just quiet, because you see what you people don’t know is that when you rob a bank, see, you have to stay quiet, you can’t go spending your money, you have to be even more quiet and innocent than if you were actually innocent, if you’re smart. And so a man came to me in the dark, and he was dressed all in black and he had a black hat and he had red eyes, and they say that’s how you can tell, because they’re not like ordinary men anymore. We’re not like ordinary men anymore. He sat down beside me and he said, ‘I’ve got a proposition for you.’ What would you say, what would you say if they asked you? I mean, they wouldn’t ask any of you—they take only dangerous men. They take only wicked men. They take only the worst of the worst and the best of the worst. Robbers and murderers and anarchists. I’ve been—I’ve known all of them, Abban the Lion, Blood-and-Thunder Boch, Dandy Fanshawe, Black Casca, Red Molly—I’ve had her—all the legends. All the stories. What would you say, if they asked? All that power. You’d live forever, or at least you’d never be forgotten after you’re gone. But the War . . . I mean the Line covers half the World. And it’s always growing. And it has Engines, and ’thopters, and bombs, and a million fucking men. And all Gun has is—is us. Heroes. Is it worth it? They can’t win. They can’t win. The Line’s going to get them all in the end. That’s—that’s what I’m doing here, see, I have a mission. A mission for the Gun, against the Line. I’m part of it. The Great War. I’d say it’s worth it. I’d say. I’d say yes if they—”
