scattered into the gatehouse. William and the mad folk milled around in panic, the rope at their ankles tangling. Rocks burst and red dust flew in the air and Liv fell to the floor and Maggfrid fell protectively over her, knocking the wind out of her.
It had fired thirty, forty feet clear of the gatehouse. A warning.
A voice sounded from the Vessel’s loudspeakers. It echoed off the canyon’s walls. It distorted and boomed.
“GIVE UP THE AGENT. GIVE UP THE AGENT. GIVE UP THE SLAGGING AGENT.”
Creedmoor threw himself behind a rock. His heart pounded, and he felt old and weak and exposed.
“GIVE UP THE AGENT.”
The loudspeaker boomed, and Creedmoor’s master shouted in his ear:
—Now they will be looking for an Agent. The House will be on guard. You should not have dawdled, Creedmoor.
—Shut up. Let me think.
The loudspeaker boomed: “I SEE HIM. GIVE THE BASTARD UP.”
The Vessel opened fire. Lead cursed and roared and spat away on the other side of the rock, harming no one, echoing up and down the ravine’s high walls. A pointless, ill-tempered display of power. One or more of the mad folk was screaming. Creedmoor uncorked a bottle of Sloop’s tonic water and swigged down a mouthful of the acrid stuff. He waited with some curiosity to see if it would do anything for his nerves. It did not.
A whistling came down the canyon, subtle at first, then piercing. In the distance, the shutters on the House’s windows banged wildly open and shut; even over the noise of the Vessel, the rushing and clattering were audible. Red dust rose whirling into the air.
There was a strong sense of pressure; it began with a prickling of the skin and progressed quickly to the point where sinuses and eyeballs and teeth ached. Blood thickened; the veins in Creedmoor’s neck and head popped out, and his heart felt tight and heavy.
The Spirit in action! Creedmoor felt it rising, gathering. He hadn’t expected to see it in action; in fact, he had hoped quite fervently not to. But he couldn’t deny that he was curious. Hand on his hat, he poked his head over the edge of the rock.
Little whirlwinds of dust swirled up, so that it seemed that long red fingers reached toward the Vessel. It reared back like a spooked horse. It hung in the whirling air, its gun silent for a second, and Creedmoor was able to observe it closely. Insectlike, yes; quite similar also to the rubber and glass and steel gas masks that the men of the Line sometimes used. The wings that spun above it were a blur.
The Vessel spun on its axis under the whirring wing-blades and rose slowly out of the ravine, but it was too late.
The air was full of dust and roaring; the whistle was now a howl, rushing past Creedmoor’s ears as if he were falling. He clamped his hat brim down over his ears.
A fist of dust struck the Vessel from the sky.
With a dreadful noise, the Vessel’s blades buckled. The dust cloud burst around the Vessel’s blades and lost its illusion of form and solidity, dissipating upward into the blue sky. The Vessel spun down into the side of the ravine, where it tumbled into flame and broken metal. Its belly tore and clockwork guts tumbled out; toothed wheels and gears glowing red-hot rolled out into the canyon.
For a long moment, the billowing dust clouds over the canyon seemed to form a vast human shape, squatting protectively over the House. Dust swelled like sloped shoulders, heavy breasts, rolls of fat, thick haunches—How fat it is, Creedmoor thought, how greedy, how old!
It burst. A rain of sharp rocks, whipped up by the winds, now fell, as if hurled, on the Vessel’s wreckage. That struck Creedmoor as spiteful.
The gate guards were shouting: “Who did this?”
“A machine of the Line?”
“Why would the Line attack us?”
“We’re neutral! What do they want?”
“They said there was an Agent of the . . .”
Creedmoor thought:
—They want an Agent. They won’t rest until they find one. So let’s see that they do.
He stood and cried out—“There he is! I see him!” And he vaulted the rock he’d been hiding behind and sprinted full-tilt through the howling winds and the dust and the sharp rocks toward where the mad folk stood, still bound by their ankle rope, cowering in a circle. One of them, the old woman, was messily dead—the Vessel’s gun had caught her as it spun and fell. “Your fault,” Creedmoor muttered. “Your fault,