and Liv herself was drowsy. She noted dispassionately a sharp glittering needle entering her forearm.
“Mrs. Alverhuysen? Sorry to bother you, ma’am.”
He had an ugly hoarse voice—a Linesman’s voice. Her head lolled and his rough hand reached out to her cheek to steady her, to fix her gaze in the harsh light. He had very dirty nails.
“Steady on there, ma’am. The Line’s got questions for you. About your destination. I hear you’re a doctor. I hear you’re headed out west.”
Her whole arm was numb, and very cold. She found herself nodding, without intending to. A small part of her mind wondered with dispassionate curiosity what they’d drugged her with.
He spoke very slowly and patiently. It rather reminded Liv of the way she sometimes spoke to Maggfrid, and she disliked it, but she seemed unable to object.
“You’re going to Kingstown. Then where?”
Her own words were a distant buzz in her ears. She wasn’t sure what she’d said, but apparently it pleased him, because he favored her with an unappealing smirk.
“Good, good. Thought you might be.”
He blurred. “Stay awake now, ma’am.”
He reached out and pinched her arm.
“Dangerous country. Are you going there alone?”
She turned her head to Maggfrid, who remained slumped immobile on his seat. She realized that she would not have woken him to face this horrible apparition with her, even had she been able to call out, which it appeared she was not.
“Right. Him. The defective. Yes, he’s on the manifest, we know. Disgusting. Anyone else? Anyone worse? Meeting anyone? A nice honest naïve young woman like you, a visitor to this part of the world, some handsome fellow talks you into helping him with something that doesn’t sound quite right . . . Do you know what I’m talking about? No? No. All right.”
Her head lolled. He snapped his fingers under her nose.
“Your purpose at this Hospital? Any particular patients in mind? Any . . .”
She drifted again. He slapped her and answers tumbled out. Then it seemed some more time had passed and he was hunched over, rummaging through her possessions. He sniffed at her flask of nerve tonic and snorted contemptuously.
“Opium-fiend, then. Unreliable. Oh, well.”
He left dirty thumbprints on her journals and creased the pages of the Child’s History. He lifted up her golden watch to the light and rattled it.
“Huh. All right.”
Other men entered. Two or more—she couldn’t count. Gray, black, indistinct. They opened briefcases and removed complicated metal instruments, pincers, spools of copper wire.
“She’s watching us.”
“Right. Sleep, Doctor.”
Someone’s hand reached out and pushed down on the plunger of the needle in her forearm. Something cold and annihilating rushed into the line of her veins, and she was flushed out of the light into silence and darkness. The black thundering singing monster these ugly men served carried them all through the night and along the silver web of the Line and across the dark continent into the West. . . .
In the morning, Liv remembered almost none of it. She had a vague recollection that some passing Linesmen had disrupted her sleep and been intolerably rude. She put her stiffness down to her prolonged immobility on hard seats. Imperiously she insisted on walking up and down the corridors to restore the healthy flow of blood and humors; the Linesmen grumbled but tolerated it.
They changed Engines at Harrow Cross. Three days after that, they arrived at Kingstown Station, the Line’s westernmost terminus. After that it was horse-drawn wagons on roads then dust trails, then mules, then finally she followed her local guide on foot. Liv’s watch started working again, and so she knew exactly how slowly they crawled over those broken red hills. Westward; out to the edge of things. There were ravens in the sky, and things stranger than ravens; in the distance she saw the heavy iron aircraft of the Line, droning and smoking, hovering like hawks. What were they hunting?
They descended a narrow slippery trail into a shadowed canyon, wide as the broad flat river that flowed beside the Academy, deeper than—well, certainly deeper than anything Liv could think to compare it to!
As they passed into the shadow of the canyon, there was a dark smoke-cloud on the horizon and she thought of war. Was the House safe? Of course not. Of course not! She had not come here to be safe. She ached, and she was tired, and she felt purposeful and strong.
Her guide pointed. “There.”
There was a fence strung from side to side of the canyon, and a gatehouse, and behind it loomed