and metal and ivory and powder. Sometimes when their Agents died or their vessels were destroyed, they vanished from the world for decades, sulking in their Lodge; sometimes they came back at once, hungry for revenge. Some of them were carried by famous generals or warriors; others favored spies and blackmailers and murderers, and might never be known to history at all. Creedmoor’s best guess was that there were not fewer than three dozen, and probably not more than a hundred.
Before Creedmoor, Marmion had been borne by a con man called Smiling Joe Portis, who’d been arrested by men of the Line in Gibson City and dragged back to Harrow Cross to be hanged. In the last century, Marmion had been borne by a woman called Lenore Van Velde, aka Lenore the White, who’d stopped the advance of the Line over the Stow River by introducing plague rats into their encampments while posing as a cook. It was possible that Marmion had been borne by the legendary One-Eye Beck, who’d blown the bridge over the Tappan Gorge with a black-powder petard, sending the Archway Engine screaming back down to hell, from which it arose again two hundred years ago. That was all Creedmoor knew of his master’s history; presumably it went back a full four hundred years, to Founding and the first western settlements. And before that—before humans woke it and gave it form—before that Marmion slept in the earth. Or in fire. Or the stars. Or elsewhere entirely. It was hard to say.
The gods of the enemy were easier to count. Their straight and constant paths could be seen on maps. There were exactly thirty-eight Engines in the world.
His head spun in the smoke and he drowsed for a second. The crack and hiss of the fire began to sound like distant conversation. A voice in the back of his brain snapped him awake—
—Creedmoor! Listen.
Not his master—one of the others. The voice was the same but different. Which one was it? Belphegor? Barbas? Naamur? Gorgon?
—Creedmoor! We have work for you.
—Creedmoor! We have chosen you from among many.
—Creedmoor! You must go west, to the edge of the world.
And there were other voices beneath those, more distant, more alien—buzz and click and the off-kilter rhythm of gunfire. Part of the Guns was in the world, and they sang to each other across the continent in those distant echoes of violence. Part of them was always in their Lodge, which was—where? In the fires beneath the earth? In the dark beyond the stars? Creedmoor didn’t know.
The walls of old Josiah’s cabin were no longer visible. The room was made of smoke and fire and stink. Creedmoor didn’t understand or care to understand the metaphysics of it, but he was now in what might be called an anteroom to the Lodge itself, and it turned out that others were there waiting for him:
—Hello, Creedmoor. Have you been enjoying your retirement? No rest for the wicked, is there?
—You cowardly dog, Creedmoor, I thought you were dead. Dead or gone to No-Town. Have you been skirt-chasing while we were fighting?
—Hello, John. Sad news! The young bucks have forgotten you. You used to be a name to conjure with, but I mentioned you to a promising young fellow the other day and he said, Who? They have no respect, no manners.
Those were the voices of his peers, distantly refracted through the fire. His fellow Agents, scattered all across the continent, each one no doubt looking into their own smoking fires, each one accompanied by their own master. Jen of the Floating World; Abban the Lion; Dandy Fanshawe. It had been so long since he’d heard their voices. And there were others, again, clamoring behind them. Creedmoor recognized Hudnall the Younger, Kid Glove Kate, and Big Fane. He closed his eyes to clear his head and said,
—Are we all here? Such a rare gathering. I’m flattered.
Marmion answered:
—Many of us are here. You will go alone, but there will be others watching over you.
—Go where?
—On the edge of the world there is a hospital.
—Yes?
—West of here. North of Greenbank, northwest of Kloan. East of the world that is not yet made, and the far sea. It is called the House Dolorous.
—And?
—Quiet, Creedmoor. Listen. There is a man there. We believe there is a man there. We do not know. We have gathered rumors in dark places, and scryed, and sniffed out trails.
—They mean my spies gathered rumors. My girls. Don’t they always take the credit? The Guns are