sleep in his clothes, and his collar was suddenly choking him. The weapon—the Gun—the temple of metal and wood and deadly powder that housed his master’s spirit—sat on the floor by the bed and throbbed with darkness. All the room seemed to bend and sway around it. Creedmoor couldn’t face looking at it yet.
The voice sounded in his head, like metal scraping, like powder sparking, like steel chambers falling heavily into place.
—Creedmoor. You are needed again.
CHAPTER 3
THE BLACK FILE
It was the morning of the first day of the third month of the year 1889—or 296 in the reckoning of the Line—and Sub-Invigilator (Third) Lowry sat in a small ill-lit office, filling out forms. The tall moonfaced clock that loomed behind Lowry’s shoulder had just informed him, through a series of insistent whistles and clacks that still to this day induced anxiety, though Lowry was now thirty-two years old and had been a soldier for twenty-two years, that the time was 14:00. He had not slept in two days. The bags under his eyes were like big black zeros, and the stubble on his jaw was a palpable disgrace. Every hour on the hour, he took one of the dark gray anti-sleep tablets, which were not to be confused with the light gray appetite-suppressant tablets, or the chalky libido-suppressants, or the black intellect-sharpeners. He had work to complete.
His office had one small square window, too high to allow any view that might distract him; nothing was visible through it except slate-gray clouds. That view never changed. In the haze of industry that surrounded Angelus Station, it was always gray. For all Lowry knew, the sky beyond those smog-clouds might be blue or white or any other horrible thing, but down here it was gray.
His office echoed with the sound of machinery outside, his typing inside. Angelus Station was preparing for the return, refueling, and rearming of its Engine, which occurred every thirteen days and was always a vast undertaking. No delays were tolerated. Every machine and process of the Station was being pushed to capacity. Lowry pecked away at the keys, slowly, one-fingered, taking infinite agonies over the composition of his reports, on which his career might depend.
Not only was his office small, but a tangle of pipes and cables poked through its walls at roughly head height, carrying important fuels and heating and cooling fluids from one part of the Station to another, clanging and steaming and occasionally dripping warm acrid water onto the back of Lowry’s neck. A person not familiar with the operations of the Line might infer, from Lowry’s surroundings, that he was low-ranking; that would be wrong. In fact, Lowry occupied a position somewhere in the middle range of the upper reaches of the hierarchy of Angelus Station’s several hundred thousand personnel, military and civilian, a hierarchy that was almost as complex and convoluted as the Station’s plumbing. However, the Line believed in keeping its servants humble, the more so the more responsibility that was entrusted to them. The Angelus Engine’s Sub-Invigilators (Second) and (First) had even smaller offices than Lowry’s. The Invigilator had no office, as far as Lowry knew, and possibly did not exist except in the form of a signature on certain official documents. The higher ranks and civilian administrators were a mystery to Lowry, one it was not his business to investigate.
Three identical black-and-gray uniforms hung from the pipes behind Lowry’s back. They made him feel like unfriendly eyes were spying on him, which he put down to sleep deprivation—he wasn’t imaginative, normally.
His office had one single decoration: a copy of the commendation that had been issued to his unit of the Angelus Engine’s Second Army for its part in the capture and execution of the Agents Liam “the Wolf of the South” Sinclair and Goodwife Sal. It was sixteen years old.
On a shelf over his desk he had a copy of the Black File. It was his most treasured possession. It occupied twelve thick black volumes, and every one of its pages contained top-secret intelligence on the Line’s great enemies, the Agents of the Gun. It was not widely circulated. Lowry had undergone a six-month review process before being permitted to read the thing, and another two-year review to be permitted to possess a copy.
He had made a special study of the subject of the Agents, and believed himself to be something of an expert. His hatred of them was unusual even by the standards of officers of the Line. No