never been interested in; he found them self-righteous and dull. He didn’t see the romance of them until a few years later, after the Republic was smashed at Black Cap Valley and the cause was doomed, and by then it was too late.
The soldier’s arm was outstretched to help Creedmoor up.
“You’re a long way from home, son.”
Creedmoor stood without taking the officer’s hand. The officer shrugged; smiled; rested his hand again on the reins. “By your accent and your aspect, I reckon you’re a Lundroy-man, born and bred. Far, far from home.”
Behind him the mob was watching, waiting.
“You’re a long way from home, too, Officer. What business does the Republic have here?”
“No business of yours, son.”
Hanging from the officer’s saddlebags like strange fruit were three black iron canisters, roughly cylindrical, but jutting with sharp-edged protrusions: gears, teeth, wheels, hammer-locks. Bombs. Weapons of the Line, mass produced in factories, like the Linesmen who carried them. The officer must have won them in battle.
The officer wasn’t much older than Creedmoor. Creedmoor envied and despised him and suddenly craved his respect. But before Creedmoor could say anything, the man leaned down and in a low flat voice told him, “Now, go home. Go to your lodgings. If these farm boys take it into their flat heads to show you violence, I ain’t going to help you.” He straightened again in the saddle. “It ain’t my mission here to make trouble. Sorry, son. Go home.”
What home? Creedmoor passed the last of the afternoon out in the fields, under a tree—hiding, sweating, wretched. He stole back into town in the evening. The market was over.
There was one main street in Twisted Root and two bars: Kennerly’s and the Four-and-Twenty. Kennerly’s ran gaming tables for traveling quality and advertised wines shipped in from Juddua and the farthest old-world east; the Four-and-Twenty had sawdust floors and smelled like an out house. Creedmoor sat alone in the shadows of the Four-and-Twenty and drank, and drank, and shook with anger, and watched the door with eager dread for the farmers from the market to show their faces.
There was a card game going at the next table. He avoided eye contact.
He drank the cheapest stuff in the house—money was tight. His pamphlets were gone, trampled in the dirt. He’d paid for the printing of them himself, and he didn’t have the money to do it again. Actually, he’d paid for the printing with stolen money—with money he’d borrowed from a trusting bank clerk from the Smiler meeting circle back in Beecher City, who’d been eager to invest in Creedmoor’s new business plan, a plan that did not, in fact, exist. Creedmoor could be charming and persuasive when he was lying—it was only when he tried to tell the truth that he got himself into trouble. He’d told himself the money was for a good cause, and it was; but now it was gone.
None of the farmers who’d assaulted him came through the door. The whore who worked the house flounced her skirts over to him, saw the look in his eyes, and swished swiftly away again. She sat and laughed with the game-players. A couple of snaggletoothed grave-digger-looking gentlemen sat at their own table, silently staring past each other. Some old traveler in a long black wax-coat sat in the far corner, in shadows, under a wide-brimmed hat, in still silence—save that every few minutes, he muttered to himself. The bartender read—lips working slowly, one finger tracing the page—one of the hawker’s lurid pamphlets: Regarding the Bloody Adventures of the Agent Henry Steel (Who Carried Both Hammer and GUN) and His Terrible Death Ground Under by the Wheels of the Line.
When the slaver Collins darkened the doorway, Creedmoor froze stiff in his chair.
Collins was alone. Weaving and smiling; already drunk—he must have been made welcome at Kennerly’s, Creedmoor thought. He must have done good business.
Collins’s eyes lit on Creedmoor and he winked and laughed. “No hard feelings, son.” Then he sat down at the game table, put a hand on the whore’s voluminous skirts, and waited to be dealt in.
Creedmoor half stood and loudly slurred, “Collins. Collins. You make me sick.”
The bartender put down the pamphlet and reached below the bar. The man in the long coat in the corner mumbled something to himself. The two men who might be grave-diggers watched with what might have been professional curiosity.
Collins turned calmly to Creedmoor—“You’re young, son. You’ll learn how things are”—then turned back to the game.
Creedmoor clutched the bottle by its