crowd—arms outstretched, hands clutching the podium. He smiled at his people. He waited for them to quiet down.
President Hobart’s eyes met Liv’s. He leaned down and whispered in his aide’s ear.
“President Hobart, I propose that—”
A young man put his hand gently on her arm and said, “Ma’am.”
Soon Liv was politely removed from the meeting hall. The aide escorted her across town—in apologetic silence—then left her, jogging back to the meeting briskly, his back receding in the rain, his hand on his cap.
Liv was alone—which was for the best, since she wasn’t sure she could speak. She felt quite stunned. After weeks and weeks of reading the history of the Republic, daydreaming of it, conversing with its fallen General—after all that, to find it, preserved as in a museum—and to be shut out—it was baffling.
They had refused her help. They did not want her advice. She was of no importance, powerless to affect her fate. Her safety depended entirely on Hobart’s wisdom, by which she was not impressed.
She wandered the town, sometimes shaking her head, sometimes smiling. She went west and quickly reached the walls, and the moat, and the guard towers. She waved to a young man high overhead, who held a rifle. He waved back. He wore a bright red officer’s cap. His father’s?
Beyond the moat, the oaks pressed in. A cool and inviting darkness. Liv considered fleeing into it. Abandoning the General. Creedmoor might not look for her now. Sharp mountains rose beyond the forest, purple in the west. The sun was starting to set behind them, making the snow on their peaks a shining brazen rim. The rain, still falling, thin and cold, glowed in the failing light. That morning, the impossible western sun had risen blazing from behind those mountains.
Liv took two steps closer to the bridge, and a young man stepped in front of her, blocking her path. She recognized the face—the unfortunate witch’s wen on his nose. Was it Blisset or Singleton? She’d not seen them since they found her in the woods. He remembered her, of course. He shook his head. He would not meet her eyes.
“You are quite right, sir,” she said. “It is late for a walk in the woods. I might get lost in the dark.”
“Quite right, ma’am.”
“You’re very kind to your guests.”
Liv turned back. She walked New Design’s muddy streets. They were laid out in a finely planned wheel, which she had to concede was rational and elegant. It stood—Morton had explained—for some principle of order or organization that the Republic held dear.
The lights were coming on in the windows. Oil lamps or hearth fires, according to the stature of the houses. A golden haze in the evening rain. In Liv’s mind, New Design was a rolling wheel broken off from a beautiful gigantic machine, some glittering clockwork of government, spinning free, diminished and alone, finally falling here, far from its parent. In a ditch. In the dirt. In a quiet distant field. Still spinning, these little lives caught in its spokes. The General had built to last.
This place was a miracle! Liv felt a sudden affection for it. It was a shabby miracle, no doubt, a tired miracle, its people falling into smallness and fixed ways—but it was the last of something splendid. Each of these people had been touched by greatness; they had seen a finer world.
As she idled through the rainy streets, Liv dreamed of saving them. A speech, perhaps? A plan, a scheme, some ingenious reversal or stratagem that might turn back the Line. Or somehow leading them farther into the West, to safety . . .
For the General’s sake, they had to survive.
For the world’s sake, they had to survive. If they never returned from the West, if the world never knew of them, so what? The world was a finer place while this dream persisted.
Liv passed by Dr. Bradley’s house. There was a long low cabin beside it, where the hospital beds were. Captain Morton had pointed it out to her. It was every inch a soldier’s camp hospital. There were three men loitering outside the canvas-curtained door, two with rifles. All with spears and swords.
Liv stood across the darkening street from them. Her hair and clothes were quite drenched now, but she’d long since ceased to care. Cold had not killed her yet. The dark-haired young man with the finest and most silver-filigreed rifle caught her eye, then snapped his head straight again and pointedly ignored her.