home, I guess. Back to work. I had heroic notions that I might break free, but I guess that’s all over now.”
From over the edge of the dune, there was the sound of stomping, sliding footsteps; shouting; grumbling; the rattle of packs and cans and weapons.
“Or perhaps not,” Creedmoor said. “Perhaps not.”
The footsteps came closer. The voices of Linesmen carried on the empty night air.
“My Gun, Liv,” Creedmoor said, trying to stand, and failing. “Hand me my Gun, please, Liv.”
But Liv was already off, and running, over the dunes.
Liv fell to her belly—standing, running, would only expose her to the Linesmen’s rifles. She crouched and slithered and crawled through the ash, through the hollows between the dunes. She put some distance between herself and Creedmoor and the General. Lying on her belly, she lifted her head a few nervous inches over the crest of a dune and looked back.
She saw them coming.
Five men. That was instantly clear, though all Liv could see were tiny silhouettes against the spoiled dawn. Short, heavy, heads down, not running but gracelessly stamping forward. A row of distant chimneys squatting the skyline. They went up and over the top of an ash-dune and were gone from view. When they reappeared, they’d grown larger, and she could see the black of their uniforms, the hard jut of their weapons. Two of them carried some kind of heavy box between them; as they came closer, they threw it away and started jogging.
When they were close enough that she could see the gas masks that elongated their jaws into inhuman forms, she slipped down out of sight and slid away. The ash whispered beneath her shifting body and she froze, inched forward again, froze again. She crept away with nightmare slowness. She heard gunfire.
Creedmoor crawled on his belly through shifting ash, to where his Gun lay, some way upslope and hard to get to. He kept sliding back down. Behind him he heard the wheezing and panting of the Linesmen as they negotiated their own shifting nightmarish obstacle course of ash.
—The General is not yet dead, Creedmoor.
—He will be soon.
—But not yet. Fight, Creedmoor.
His veins flooded with fire. He lunged, closed his hand around his weapon, and rolled over on his back. He shot twice and killed two Linesmen, but his wounds slowed him and he could not get off a third short before the last three Linesmen got their rifles up. Their mechanisms rattled and coughed and Creedmoor screamed as a bullet hit his hip; then he screamed again as Marmion said,
—No.
. . . and began to force his bones roughly back together.
Then the Linesmen were on him. They stamped on him and kicked him and tore the Gun from his hand and kicked it away.
—You deserve this, Creedmoor.
—Yes.
Liv heard Creedmoor screaming, cursing, roaring obscenities, laughing and taunting, as if he’d never been happier in his whole hateful life. . . .
Why didn’t she run? She wasn’t sure. She told herself it was safest to stay still and silent. She told herself that perhaps she might still somehow save the General. The truth was she found herself oddly reluctant to leave Creedmoor.
She hoped they killed him.
She didn’t want him to have to die alone.
What if they heard her? The sound of her own breathing roared in her ears. The tick of her pocket watch echoed. . . .
And in fact, now that she listened to it as if for the first time—now that it seemed so loud as to drown out Creedmoor’s roars and screams—Liv sensed a horrible familiarity in its off-kilter ticktock, its rattle and rush. She knew that sound, that rhythm. She held it to her ear and heard in brittle miniature the Song of the Line, the Song the Engines beat out over the continent. She held it in her hand and stared at its blank gold-plated face. It was too heavy. She knew with utter certainty that if she could unscrew its gilt backing, she’d see some oily black iron parasite lurking in its bright clockwork. No wonder they’d never lost her. How long had they been spying on her? Had they gone through her luggage when the Engine carried her west?
She swore and dropped the device. She shoved it down into the ash, grinding it with the heel of her palm. She covered it over and crept slowly away.
The last three Linesmen stood all around Creedmoor, kicking and spitting and shoving him down in the ash and watching him heal and wounding