The Half-Made World

by Felix Gilman

  —Creedmoor.

  —How much more—? You’re back.

  —Yes, Creedmoor. We have found our way to you. It was difficult. This place is not yet ready for us.

  —How do they manage out here without you, I wonder. Look at this!

  —Shut up, Creedmoor.

  Pain filled Creedmoor’s head, and a stink of burning, sweat, gunpowder, fear. Red-hot fingers probed and dug into his memories.

  —You do not know how we have suffered, Creedmoor. You do not know the agonies of terror and uncertainty, the screaming and weeping in our Lodge. Weeks in the wilderness. We did not know if you had failed us. Creedmoor, what’s this?

  —What’s what?

  —What have you been telling the woman? What lies about us? How dare you? You profane our mysteries with your chatter. You give up our secrets. You—

  —It gets lonely out here. No harm—

  —You think of betraying us.

  —I do not!

  —We know you better than you know yourself. You coward, Creedmoor. You must be brought to heel.

  Creedmoor fell silent. His face flushed, and he clutched his forehead, and he grunted, suddenly stricken. He stood there, head in his hand, and his hat dropped limply to the dusty ground.

  For a moment, Liv considered going to him—asking him if he was well, if she could help him, as if he were not a monster. . . . Instead she held the General by his arm and watched.

  Creedmoor stumbled two steps forward, then half a step back. He shook his head and moaned.

  Liv fumbled in her smock for the arrowhead. She clutched its shaft tightly and thought carefully.

  A cold touch against her calf—something rough and wet scraping against her bare flesh—distracted her.

  The mist drifted around her legs. Eddies of it thickened, congealed, acquired a strange slippery solidity. Only a few feet away from her—distracted, Liv let go of the General’s arm—a white wisp of mist flicked fish-tail around a rock.

  Another wisp slipped from behind and touched against her, and this time it was quite clearly wet, and scaled; and what was more, there was no doubt that it was moving. She shrieked and spun around to see it course past her, squirming over the dry earth, and it leapt into the air like a salmon at spawning, and shone for a moment, then blew away.

  She turned back—the General was talking again, but she wasn’t listening—and saw that the white mist poured now down the valley all along the miles of riverbed behind them and all the way back to the place where the river bent around a distant rockslide, two days back—and the mist rushed urgently past her legs, up to her knees now, leaping and full of purposeful pulsing shadow-life.

  More solid now, flickering, sinuous, some tiny and darting, some of them heavy and long as her forearm. All white, save for their eyes, which—rushing past so quickly they were like shooting stars—were a pale blue. The tide was up to her waist now, and still leaping; one flicked just past her ear—she could see for a second the precise intricacy of its scales—and she gasped. The ghosts of all the life the river once held? They were weightless and insubstantial; nevertheless, she staggered and nearly fell.

  Then they were gone; all gone past. Her legs, Liv noted with horror, were bleeding; whether from the rough touch of their scales or from the needles of their teeth, she could not say, but tiny trickles of blood ran down her calves.

  There was no pain.

  Blood trickled thinly onto Liv’s boots. It trickled onto the riverbed, which was no longer dry cracked red earth, but was now mud. A loosening, thinning mud, in which her feet sank.

  Water trickled up from the earth to meet her blood. It pooled, clear and glistening, at her feet. It pooled all around her, in the mud; the pools overspilled, and tiny rivulets crawled searching through the mud, joining in a bright tracery that was soon washed away as the water rose everywhere—there was a whistling sound, a rushing sound, a faint sound of drumming in the distance—and suddenly the river was rising all around her.

  An inch deep. Soon it was two. The river’s rock released its memories of water.

  Liv, screaming, scrambled, feet slipping in the muck, for the nearest bank.

  She was nearly there—just reaching out to pull herself up onto the rocks—before she thought to turn back for the General.

  The water was maybe a foot deep now. It was still, but eddies of white froth swirled here and there on it. The General was on his knees and bending over; his hands were cupped and he seemed to be drinking from the water, or washing his face; his long gray beard dangled wetly in it.

  She shouted, “Creedmoor!”—but Creedmoor remained frozen, useless. He stood some forty feet away, leaning against a rock, heel of his palm to his eyes, eyes closed, groaning hideously.

  “Creedmoor—for once when you might have been useful—what are you doing!”

  Liv forged back through the water—it was deep enough now to be a slog, and she kicked up spray with each heavy step—and seized the General by his bony shoulders. She tried to lift him to his feet, but he struggled; pulled away; and within seconds, Liv’s own footing was lost in the mud, and she fell, and for a long moment her head was beneath the water, and everything was silent, and blue, and peaceful. Then she thrashed up, gasping.

  It was a harder fight than it should have been. When she broke the surface, she saw that the waters had risen farther, were waist-height now, and there was the beginning of a tide. Slowly, sluggishly, the heavy waters were moving.

  Liv held the General by his beard and lifted his head out of the water. He smiled blankly up at her.

  She started out for the bank again, trying to drag him with her. The waters shoved rudely against her.

  —Creedmoor. Enough. You are forgiven. Remember that this pain we showed you was nothing. Remember we were only starting. Now go save your own hide, Creedmoor. We trust you to do that, at least.

  Liv heard the sound of Creedmoor yelling. She turned to see him take his hands away from his head—still balled into fists—and stare around him with wild bloodshot eyes.

  Creedmoor’s eyes met hers, as she thrashed through the water, and for a second, he looked terribly confused and old and frightened and mad. Then he gathered himself, and the thin smile returned to his face.

  “Sacred space!” Creedmoor yelled at her. “Who can blame them if they are angry? But we have a sacred purpose, too, don’t we? Yes, our purpose is no doubt very sacred and noble indeed—”

  He drew his weapon, spraying water in a wide flourish. He raised it up into the gray sky until it was leveled at the mighty head of the giant of the southern slope. He faced Liv again for an instant and winked. Then he fired.

  The valley echoed with it.

  A cloud of dust and stone burst high up on the hill.

  Slowly, slowly, the giant’s vast face slid apart; the left side of its jaw sagging slowly down. It put Liv in mind of a stroke victim. Then with gathering speed, with a terrible grinding roar, the mass tumbled, broke, scattered in cascading dust and shards. The giant’s shoulder leaned and then cracked and fell, taking the outstretched arm with it, breaking what it occurred to Liv might once have been a bridge, back when this was a wide fast living river. . . .

  She screamed and turned and covered her own face and the General’s as the crumbling mass descended.

  Rocks fell around her. There was a sharp pain in her shoulder, and blood, as a fragment of flint hit her. . . . She screamed and held her hands over her ears and waited until the noise stopped. When she opened her eyes again, she moaned, because the madness was not over:

  The river rose. It reared, as if wounded. The waters rose in an instant from Liv’s hips to her chest; they pushed more strongly; slow, still, but implacable. Dark heavy shapes pushed through it, around her legs. Something sleek and sinuous shoved past her, and she stumbled. She was barely able to stand upright.

  She would not make it back to the safety of the bank again.

  “Creedmoor—help us!”

  Thunder soun
ded overheard; drumming sounded from the hills.

  Creedmoor, his face gray with stone dust, turned his weapon to the northern giant and laughed.

  Then he returned the Gun to its waterlogged holster. He rolled up his sleeves and stalked forward. He passed Liv without looking at her, his eyes fixed intently on the water. He turned left—stalked left, searching—right again—and lunged.

  He reached into the water with both hands. He seemed to have grabbed something—something that slipped and wriggled beneath the tide. Liv could see only a dark shadow, thrashing. Creedmoor set his shoulders firmly and held tight, and then, like a farmer delivering a breached calf, wrenched the thing up out of the water and into the air.

  Creedmoor was holding by its throat something that at first Liv took—so sleek and long and black-haired was it—for an otter, or a large dog. It shook itself, and the long black hair and beard shook aside and exposed chalky flesh, red-painted; bony flailing arms with long, long nails that scratched at Creedmoor’s face, long fingers that wrapped around Creedmoor’s throat.

  It was one of the Folk. Tiny, thin, pale, struggling. Wizened and ancient. Something in its lines, in its red sigils, under the hair, suggested to Liv that it was a female of the species.

  Creedmoor held the wet Folk woman with his left arm, his elbow locked around her throat, just as her long white rootlike fingers locked around his. With his right hand, he held the Gun against her head.

  There was a moment of expectant stillness. The waters stilled, too, Liv thought. The General was nowhere to be seen. Sobbing, she began again her struggle for the safety of the north bank.

  Behind her, Creedmoor and the Folk woman held each other in tense silence.

  —Monster.

  —John Creedmoor to you, ma’am. What are you doing in my head?

  —Your kind are not wanted here. Do not look on this place, do not name these things, do not make them into things they are not.

  She spoke in his head with no voice, no accent, no sound or illusion of sound—there was only the sense, an instant afterwards, of a memory of her meaning.

  —Kill it, Creedmoor.

  His master spoke with a noise like the drop of a gallows, the snapping of necks.

  —This is very crowded and painful and confusing. I don’t suppose either of you care.

  —How dare you bring this thing here?

  —Kill it, Creedmoor. Kill it at once.

  —Fallen thing. Broken thing. Mad thing. Poisoned thing. We pity you. But you have no place here. Not yet. Go.

  —Kill it and be done with it, Creedmoor, it mocks us—

  —Go.

  —Marmion?

  —Your master has gone away.

  —Forever?

  —No. It will find its way back.

  —How long?

  —Long enough.

  —I don’t know whether to kiss you or kill you or run screaming.

  Creedmoor slowly took the gun from the woman’s head and pointed it back down the valley away from her.

  The woman uncurled her long fingers from around Creedmoor’s throat.

  He didn’t holster his gun, but kept it ready. The waters were now surging around his chest.

  —What now, ma’am?

  —Go back, monster. Do not look on these things, do not—

  —What’s your name, ma’am?

  —It pains us to talk to you. It pains us to be named by you.

  —I told you mine.

  —Ku Koyrik. Do not misname me.

  —Is that a name or a curse?

  —Hound of the border.

  —What border?

  —Made; unmade. Fallen; free.

  —Let us pass.

  —No.

  —Please?

  —What?

  —Please.

  —You are strange.

  —I mean it sincerely. I see no need for us to fight.

  Creedmoor let go of the woman. She darted through the water and launched herself up with a flealike kick of her bony legs onto a rock, where she crouched, glaring. Creedmoor holstered his weapon and stood in the rising waters with his hands raised and empty.

  —I have maimed myself so that I could stand before you.

  —Have you? How? I’m sorry regardless. This place is sacred to you, and . . .

  —Your word. Not ours.

  —I’m sorry.

  —Words.

  —I talk too much, I know. A vain man, and not the least of my sins. If I were you, I wouldn’t welcome me either. What about the old man? Who, you’ll notice, is drowning.

  She flicked her red eyes out across the water.

  —He is the General Enver. Do you know his name? He was once a friend, so say the more scandalous and unreliable history books, of one of your kind, who went by a name that’s on the tip of my tongue, Kan-Kuk, is that right? And in his head is one of your secrets, which I believe—

  —We know all this. We planned it. We chose him. He promised to help us, he willingly took up the burden.

  —Him and old Kan-Kuk made a deal, is that right? He was to take up your weapon, save his Republic, destroy his enemies, which are also yours, is that right?

  —Stop prying, monster.

  —You’re in my head, ma’am. And why would you—?

  —He may pass. And the woman, perhaps. She is sane and we may be able to save her. Not you.

  —Without me, they’ll die. I am terrible, ma’am, right enough, I disgust myself sometimes, but what’s behind me is worse: the men of the Line. The servants of the Engines. Only I can keep the old man safe from them, and the good Doctor. Without me the Line may take what’s in the old man’s head and then I have it on good authority will be unstoppable, and that will only speed the day they come out here smoking and roaring and digging up your rocks and warrens and who built those handsome statues, ma’am, may I ask, while we’re talking?

  —Are you loyal to your masters?

  —Not so loyal as all that, ma’am. Is there a better offer?

  —I don’t know what to make of you.

  —I’m trying to negotiate, but I guess we don’t understand each other well enough.

  —We understand you well enough, monster.

  —Would it help if I begged?

  —No. It would be disgusting. Pass, then. For now. But we will watch you.

  Without a further word, she turned her back and dove headlong into the water, her mane stretching out in her wake like weeds.

  Liv struggled at the bank. The rocks were slippery and she fell and bruised herself again and again before she could climb free of the water. When she was safe, she turned back to see Creedmoor standing alone in the water, looking around.

  The water was at his chest.

  It receded.

  Within moments, it was at Creedmoor’s waist. He strode through it—it was at his knees, now—and bent down to lift from the water the General’s limp body. In another few heartbeats, the water was gone. Liv’s clothes, which a second before had hung heavy and soaking, were dry again and dusty.

  The General turned in Creedmoor’s arms and mumbled through his beard, which was wispy and dry again. He was asleep.

  With a nod of his head, Creedmoor beckoned Liv back over. She came laughing and crying in relief to take the old man from him.

  They left the giants behind in little more than an hour. The valley began to curve sharply south, and the giants were lost to view.

  Ahead the sun was setting, and the valley flooded with red light. Creedmoor shielded his eyes from the glare and stared south down the valley ahead, then west up the jagged tree-lined slopes.

  “What do you think, Liv? South, sticking with this valley where we’ve had such fun, or strike out west into the heights and the forests and who knows what?”

  She stood behind him. The General hung limply on her arm.

  “How would I know, Creedmoor?” She shook her head, too tired to think. “Where are the Line? For all I know, they never existed.”

&n
bsp; “I haven’t lied to you lately, Liv. A few days behind us still. A little to the south.”

  She shrugged. “West, then, I suppose.”

  “I agree. West it is. We should be atop these slopes by nightfall. I’ll take our friend.”

  “You certainly will.” She passed the General like a sack of meal into Creedmoor’s arms.

  “Shall we go?”

  “What happened back there, Creedmoor? Why did they let us pass?”

  “We may have violated some by-laws of the locals. I had words with their representative. I told her, I am John Creedmoor, how dare you bar my path! And she turned tail and ran.”

  “Then don’t tell me. And what happened before? When you held your head and—”

  “My master is gone.” The words came out abruptly, and his face closed behind them. He paused, as if waiting for a blow that never came.

  “For now,” he added.

  “Creedmoor . . .”

  He kept staring west.

  “We’ll talk later.” He glanced back at her. “I have to think.”

  He started out bounding up over the rocky banks and up the slopes and into the trees, the General slung over his back. Maybe he was telling the truth about his master’s absence, and maybe he wasn’t; what was clear, though, was that his horrible strength and speed were not significantly diminished. Liv followed as best she could.

  CHAPTER 35

  THE SHADOWS

  Lowry breathed deeply in the freezing fog, and clutched his gun with the same tight panicked grip one might use when riding on the outside of an Engine as it swerved hugely around high mountain passes. . . .

  He counted the shadows around him.

  “Mr. Collier?”

  “Yes, sir. Sir, I—”

  “Who’s missing, Collier?”

  “Don’t know, sir.”

  “Come here. Stay close.”

  There was motion in the fog. Black and gray bodies, swinging arms and legs, waving arms, heads a vague bobbing blur. Shadows at work. Lowry thought again of motion pictures, like We Too Play Our Part, with its great scenes in the foundries of Harrow Cross, the screen a mass of moving black-and-white shadows, five thousand tiny soot-blackened men in clouds of smoke, moving like pistons. . . .