The Half-Made World (47 page)

“Yes, Liv. I can
smell
them. Faintly, but I smell them. Many years and long gone. We are alone. Never fear.” He smiled.

The General, shuffling, approached the graves. He knelt, creaking, and reached a shaking finger down to the book on the grave mound. He turned its ancient pages to dust. He whimpered.

Creedmoor came and stood over him. He rubbed the grave medal against his shirt until the brass glinted again. “But let’s talk, old-timer: Do you miss your people?”

Creedmoor held the medal in front of the General’s eyes and let it shine. The General flinched but did not pull away. “Do you miss your old empire? Locked away in that ruined head of yours, do you dream of the ruin of your empire? Does it hurt?”

Liv felt a sudden sickness; a sudden fierce rush of protectiveness toward her charge; an urge to strike Creedmoor’s smirking face. . . . She swallowed it down bitterly and said only, “Do please leave him alone, Mr. Creedmoor. You cannot torment him into good health.”

He shrugged, spun the medal on his knuckles and into his pocket. “You’re the expert, of course, ma’am.”

Three days later, Liv saw, carved on the side of a white fang of rock in the riverbed, the words
ONE HUNDRED DAYS OUT
and the date
1870
. No other words; no other signs of life. Creedmoor shrugged.

Creedmoor whistled a song, over and over. It was a pretty little melody, though his tone was flat.

“Do you sing, at all, Liv?”

“I do not, Mr. Creedmoor.”

“Can you recite any poetry?”

“I do not believe that I can.”

“The wilderness stirs nothing in you? No recollection of some words you treasured as a child? No instinct of song?”

“If you kidnapped me for my musical talents, perhaps you should let me go now.”

“No going back now, Liv; we’re in this together. But it will be a long journey if I must make all the music.”

Liv stumbled over a dry root snaking through the dirt, and wrenched her hip. Creedmoor, in a generous mood, announced an early end to the day’s trek. They watched the sun go down over the mountains and the valley flood with red shadows.

“Do you know this game, Liv? My name begins with
R
. Who am I? You must ask me questions, you see. I am someone of great renown; you’ll soon guess me. It’s a guessing game.”

R
proved to be
R
ichard the
R
ed Fox, who was a famous gambler, possibly fictional, of whom Liv had never heard. In fact, it turned out that Liv and Creedmoor knew hardly a single famous man or woman in common. The rogues and adventurers and killers and monsters and generals of Creedmoor’s world meant nothing to her; while the statesmen and scientists and philosophers of the old North bored Creedmoor—even their names bored him. Hardly surprising, Creedmoor conceded; it was a very big lonely world, but marvelously full of strangeness and renown. “As it happens, Liv, I myself have a certain renown. I do not collect my clippings, that would be vulgar, but I was much noticed in reports of the Battle of Akeley Wood. There’s a story the old soldiers still tell. . . .”

The sun was a long time setting. All Creedmoor’s stories were horrible: battles, crimes, murders, cheap tricks, and lies. Liv paid no attention to his words, but listened to his tone, which was uncertain, flickering—a mixture of pride and shame, sentimentality and cynicism. He was performing—whether for her benefit or his own, she couldn’t tell.

“Creedmoor?”

“. . . now, one story that’s never been credited to my fame is the matter of the Keaton City mob, whose triumphs over the lawmen were written up in all the newspapers, but I appeared only under the alias John Circus, which I was using at the time—”

“Creedmoor.”

“Yes, Liv?”

“Why should I help you? Suppose I can heal the General—which I cannot—why should I? What will you do with him?”

“You’ll heal him because I told you to, Liv.”

“If I refused?”

He looked genuinely intrigued. “I wonder. Who knows what I might do?”

“I don’t believe you would harm me.”

“I can’t imagine why you think that, but you’re the expert. Is that your diagnosis of me?”

“Yes, Creedmoor.”

She kept her voice calm. In fact, she had no idea what Creedmoor might do. She hoped he might be convinced, or at least confused. Something about him seemed uncertain.

“Well, Doctor, I’m sorry but I can’t pay you for it. How about this: You’ll heal the old man, if you can, threats or no threats, because you are a healer, and a good person, or at least a conscientious one?”

“What would you do with him, Creedmoor?”

“You wouldn’t? Cold, unfeeling. I misjudged you.”

“What are you making me a party to? What would you do with him?”

“
I
would do nothing, Liv. Hand him over, wash my hands of it, go get drunk. I am no strategist.”

“There would be war?”

“There’s always War.”

“But you think he would make you stronger. You’ve expended great effort to recover him. Why? Does he know something? Do you think he can lead you . . . but to what? You’ll launch new attacks? You will raise new armies? You’ll make new incursions into the Line’s lands?”

“We are losing, Liv.” Creedmoor flinched for a moment, as if expecting a blow. It seemed not to come. He continued.

“We are falling back everywhere. We have always been falling back. We were falling back when I”—he patted the grip of his weapon—“took up the Cause. Indeed, that was the year that the Line razed our stronghold of Logtown and dragged its Baron’s body back to Harrow Cross, chained spread-eagled and still breathing, in the poison smoke, chained to the Engine’s black cowl. It made an impression, believe me. It was in all the newspapers. So, no, I do not imagine that we will launch new attacks. Apparently this man once saw something important, or heard something, or knows something. Some secret. The world is full of secrets. Maybe—maybe—what he has in his memory could help us slow the Line’s advance. Not stop it. That’s all I would dare hope for. We did not come to the service of the Gun because we wanted to enjoy victory, but because we wanted to lose magnificently.”

Creedmoor looked at the General—sleeping, bony legs curled like a dog, rope around his ankle, thinner and frailer now even than he had been when they left the House—and he shook his head. “Or this may very well be pointless. It would not be the first pointless mission my masters have given me.”

Liv looked at Creedmoor in surprise. He shrugged and said, “The Guns are mad, Liv.” Again, he flinched. Liv wondered if he knew he was doing it.

“Quite mad. Mad as anything in the world, bless ’em; madder even than the Line, whose purpose is at least consistent. Mad as snakes.”

“Why do you serve them, then, Mr. Creedmoor?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Why do you serve them?”

“Because if I disobey my friend here, I get the Goad; you cannot
imagine
the Goad, Liv.”

“No, Mr. Creedmoor, I mean—”

“I know what you mean, Liv.” He sighed. “They told me”—he flinched again—“They told me that the secret is a weapon that can kill the Line. A Folk weapon. Something that can kill immortal spirits. Such as, for instance, the Engines of the Line, who for four hundred years we have sabotaged, and exploded, and destroyed, and sent to hell, and back they come inexorably five or ten years later, angrier and greedier than ever.”

“A weapon.”

“Of sorts. Something of the First Folk.”

“Magic. Superstition. A delusion. Your problems are not so neatly solved. Your masters are a form of madness; you cannot
wish
them away.”

“A cure, then, perhaps. A cure for madness.”

“Perhaps. And your masters, too? Can it cure the world of them, too?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Besides, they were probably just lying to me.”

His expression was unreadable. Did he mean anything he was saying?

“Creedmoor. When you took up the Cause, how old were you?”

Creedmoor stared at her long and hard. Then he winked. “Oh no, Doctor. We will not be playing that game. I am quite healthy in my mind, thank you. Or so scarred as to be beyond your help, perhaps. One or the other. Time to sleep, I think, in any case.” He lay down with his back to her.

The General whimpered in the cold. She went to sit by him.

His stick-thin old limbs twisted uncomfortably. She held him and helped him settle into stillness.

His fierce eyes glared upward, as if challenging the stars.

“Too good for this world,” she said, surprising herself; then she repeated it. “Yes.”

There was dry mud in the General’s tangled beard.

“This is a mad world,” she said.

The General muttered, but she could not catch the words.

“How glorious your Republic must have been. I wish you could tell me of it.”

She opened the
Child’s History
to the chapter recounting the founding of the Republic. Much of it was illegible—swollen and smeared by the rains and now by black mold—but she was able to read:

The signing of the Charter was an occasion of simple ceremony. No pomp or ritual was called for. The principles of the Charter, as you have learned, were derived from plain good sense, and from natural reason. There was no call for the blessing of any prince or priest or power. Therefore the signers met by the banks of the Red River, among reeds and rushes, in the clear light of noon on a quite ordinary summer’s day in the year ’46. “A jolly day for it,” laughed President Bellow, as his manservant passed him his pen. . . .

The General fell asleep.

He was shivering; she lay against him to share their warmth.