what could only be the House. It hid in the shadow of the canyon’s walls. It was a sprawling five-story mansion, painted in fading eggshell blue, with accents of a sickly white. Broad eaves like white eyebrows on an old man’s face stretched from side to side. Its upper windows gleamed bright, its lower windows were shadowed. Beneath it there were gardens, outhouses, and distant matchstick men performing what looked like healthy exercises.
There were guards at the gate, dressed in white. They straightened up as Liv approached, and reached for their rifles.
There was an echo of footsteps down the ravine. She looked over her shoulder; behind her a little group was approaching on foot. Some of them were dressed in rags, wild-bearded and blank-eyed. A handsome gray-haired gentleman led them. More visitors to the House? Patients, possibly. They looked like they’d had a hard journey. She wondered what their story was; she doubted it was as strange as hers!
CHAPTER 13
CREEDMOOR AT WORK
It had taken Creedmoor some twenty-four hours—after departing Kloan, in embarrassing circumstances—to find a suitable group to which to attach himself. It was a procession of the walking wounded, the mad, the blind, and the lame—mostly the mad. They were being escorted through the deep ravines by a weather-beaten man in a dusty white jacket, with a rifle on his back, who held the rope to which they were all bound wrapped loosely round his right arm. They were en route to the House Dolorous, and doctors, and the healing balm of the hospital’s mysterious Spirit—about which Creedmoor remained skeptical.
First he caught their scent. The mad were not great observers of hygiene. He stalked them. He crouched behind a red rock at the top of the valley and watched them shuffle along the trail below.
—Damn it, will you look at these people. Will you just look at them. Did you ever see such a slack-jawed and sorry bunch, shuffling along in the dust, in the heat? Moaning and mumbling: oh, look at their faces! This is no way to live. Oh, will you look at them. I wonder what side they fought for, before the madness took them. Maybe no side at all. Innocents, caught in the deathly machine. What a terrible bill of indictment against us all these are; each one a count we cannot answer.
—They fell because they are weak, Creedmoor. Now they are only things to be used.
—Well, that’s one point of view, certainly.
That sort of insincere agreeability irritated Marmion intensely, which was one of the few pleasures available to Creedmoor when he was at work.
Another was tobacco. He hunkered down behind the red rock, opened his tarnished tobacco case, and rolled a cigarette. He struck the match behind the rock so that the little procession below wouldn’t see the flash, cupping it in his dirty hands though there was no wind. He tossed the dead match into a clump of thorny weed.
—Oh, but will you just look at this one, in the front. Look at his flat cow eyes and his inbred’s weak chin and snaggled teeth and the way he shuffles. Look at the daft old bitch behind him with the hair like tumbleweed and the rags and the withered old gums in her mouth that’s sucking the air, look, like it’s sugar-candy. Fuck, will you look at the one with the smile. Look at these addled and ruined shufflers. This is so very sad.
—Never mind the madmen. Keep an eye on their leader. He is armed and watchful.
—Oh, sure, and he’s the worst of the sorry bunch. Look how proud he looks! Do-gooder. Who does he think he’s helping, running these people all over the backcountry, holding their hands and wiping their asses? Taking them to rot in hospital? No one will thank him. Kinder to kill them.
—For now we need them. Later you may kill them.
—I was joking, my bloodthirsty humorless friend.
—Were you? Good. We like our servants joyful.
Creedmoor smoked. The tobacco was stale and unpleasant. In the ravine below, one of the mad folk had fallen over, pulling his neighbors with him, and their white-jacketed leader was trying to help them to their feet.
—An ugly business. No words can hide that.
—But we do not like self-pity, Creedmoor. Go to work.
—One moment.
—Go to work.
—One moment.
—You are disrespectful, Creedmoor.
—Do you know, my friend? They say that the Engines of our great enemy communicate with their servants only at a distance, by telegraph wire, by electric cable. Their Song is too terrible for any