pages to the mark. The beautiful red-haired peasant girl from the green and mists of the old country was facing for the first time her lover, fresh back from the war and wounded, though handsome.
Creedmoor had a vague sort of taste for romantic novels.
He read it by scant starlight. The night-sight was one of the Guns’ gifts to him.
—Pick-Up Wells has died.
—Who?
—Young. A recent recruit. You do not know him and now you will not.
—A bad night for the noble cause, to be sure.
—He succeeded in destroying the dam at Redbill Gorge before he died, but he stupidly let himself be caught in the flood.
—Ah. Good news and bad. The world is most wonderfully full of ups and downs, would you not say?
William came and sat by him like an eager dog. Creedmoor ignored him for as long as he could.
“Mr. Creedmoor?”
“You should sleep, William.”
“Where are we going, Mr. Creedmoor?”
“To the House Dolorous. A romantic name! I believe it comes from a song. I’ll spare you my singing voice. To the Doll House, William. To a house of healing, where perhaps one day you, too, may be healed and whole.”
“Why are you taking us there, Mr. Creedmoor?”
“Because I am a kindly shepherd, William. Because I cannot bear to let injustice stand or suffering be.”
“You feel scared. Is someone chasing after you?”
“Could well be, William.”
“Is there someone talking to you?”
“Don’t we all hear the voice of conscience, William?”
He led them shuffling through the hills and westward. After five days’ trek, they found a well-trodden trail that switchbacked laboriously down into a canyon of red rock. The canyon was deep as the ocean floor, wide and flat as the widest triumphal avenue in Jasper City or Morgan. It wound and curved, following the course of some long-dead waterway. The rock walls were rough, striated, and marked with signs of Folk carving and painting that Creedmoor didn’t have time to inspect, because his master said:
—Faster. Quick. We hear the Enemy’s wings overhead.
In the afternoon, they came round a corner and saw the House Dolorous spread out before them, hidden in the canyon, a weird freak of architecture, a huge homely sagging eggshell-blue monstrosity. . . .
A tall wire fence ran from side to side of the canyon, and the House was on the other side of it. The fence had a single gatehouse, a little left of center, with a gleaming brass warning-bell beside it. Half a dozen lazy crows perched on the fence around it.
There was a small group milling about at the gatehouse. Among them, Creedmoor noticed a number of men in white jackets, several of whom had rifles on or near their persons, and he took them to be the House’s guardians. No sign of any mysterious Spirit, of course. There were also a couple of individuals who Creedmoor assumed were newcomers to the House, same as him: a big bald oaf with a simpleton’s face, and an acceptably attractive and intelligent-looking woman in a white dress, with her blond hair tied in a bun. They had a large number of suitcases.
It crossed Creedmoor’s mind for a moment that they might be fellow toilers for the Cause, in which case he’d be extremely unhappy to be dragged halfway across the world to be some other bastard’s backup—but then as he approached, he caught the woman’s eye, and her innocence was obvious, indeed almost touching.
He smiled at her.
The guards took one look at him and raised their rifles.
CHAPTER 14
THE GUARDIAN AT THE GATE
“Steady, gentlemen, steady.”
Creedmoor spread his arms wide so that his dusty coat hung open. He stretched out and wiggled his fingers like a stage magician, but what he produced from his open coat was no rabbit; it was nothing. His belt was empty but for a small silver-clasped knife.
“My name is John Cockle. Hear me out.”
The guards at the gate relaxed a little, but kept their rifles rudely trained in Creedmoor’s direction.
There were four of them. They wore white: white shirts, white slacks, white belts. They had commendably neat hair and clean teeth. Each was in some way wounded—a missing eye, a missing ear, a hunch, half a leg. Their faces were shiny with sweat—Creedmoor imagined them sweltering all day in the guardhouse, going mad with boredom and duty. He favored them with his smile.
He gave a wink, too, to the blond woman in the white dress with the heavy luggage cases. She was a little too old for his taste, of course, and lacked the rosy-cheeked plumpness he