There was a one-armed man on the fourth floor who claimed to have fought with the Red Valley Republic, decades ago, in the days of that Republic’s brief glorious flourishing—and who, accordingly, held himself aloof from common soldiers of lesser causes. And there were men who’d fought under no flag at all, but only to defend their little homesteads from the great clashing armies of the world. And there were two men who’d fought in the tunnels of the gold mines under Harker’s Mount, on opposite sides: one for the Zizek Extraction Co., one for Jared’s Limited. They’d lost their legs together in the same tunnel collapse: now they were the best of friends.
Despite their varied allegiances, the inmates never fought each other. There was rarely a harsh word exchanged, even. Liv wondered how much of that was due to fear of the Spirit that slept below.
She stopped in on the room of Mr. Root Busro, on the fourth floor, who was by far her least depressing patient. He was unwounded—in fact, physically quite healthy. He didn’t sob or claw at his hair. Apart from the disconcerting way in which his gray eyes stared right through you, he wasn’t unpleasant to be around. His one peculiarity was that he was quite convinced that the world as it appeared was all in his own mind, and in particular that the warring forces of Line and Gun that crashed back and forth across it were merely the opposing forces of his own diseased will.
“I feel just awful about it,” he said. “But it’s not my fault. I’m not well.”
“You may rest assured that no one blames you, Mr. Busro.”
“Of course, you can’t help me, Doctor, since you’re only a thing in my mind, too, and it’s the mind that’s the problem.”
“Well, perhaps we can both do our best.”
“I do enjoy your visits, though.”
After Busro, she visited a young girl called Bella, who’d lost her family and a leg to a stray rocket, and who was (again) on the verge of suicide. As Liv and Bella talked, Dr. Hamsa passed outside, in conversation with one of the House’s guards—Renato, she thought his name was—and she overheard them talking gravely of “news of a massacre at Kloan . . . agents of the Powers . . . many dead, no one apprehended.” Her blood ran cold. Bella just stared glumly at her feet and shrugged, as if to say, See?
On the way back, she got lost. In her early days in the Doll House, Liv was forever getting lost. Its corridors were narrow and not well lit. They seemed impossibly long and labyrinthine. They were identical everywhere, painted either a funereal white, or a soft eggshell blue, which could be sometimes soothing and sometimes sad. The corridors were never empty, but the people one met were generally even less certain of their whereabouts than Liv was.
She turned a corner and bumped into John Cockle. He appeared to be replacing the hinges on one of the patients’ doors.
He gave her a cheery wave. “It creaks,” he explained. “Can’t have that, can we? Will give the little ones nightmares.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Cockle.”
“Good afternoon to you, too, Doc.”
“You’re supposed to be finishing my office.”
“Hasn’t slipped my mind even for a moment. When I’m done, you’ll have the finest office any doctor ever enjoyed. Your friends from back East will come visit just to take a look at it. As it happens, I myself am a Lundroyman by birth, no native of these parts, so I know what it’s like to be far from home—”
“Well, you seem to have made yourself quite at home here, Mr. Cockle.”
He grinned.
Cockle seemed ubiquitous; one bumped into him everywhere, except, it seemed, where he was supposed to be. After his heroics at the gate, he’d been instantly welcomed onto the House’s staff. He wasn’t a very good carpenter, and he wasn’t a very reliable handyman, but it seemed that was what he wanted to be, and he certainly gave an impression of hard work. He was friendly with everyone. In particular, it seemed that all the doctors who most resented and disliked Liv thought Creedmoor was just the swellest fellow ever. . . .
She found him unnerving.
“Good-bye, Mr. Cockle.”
“John, please. Otherwise I get confused. If you’re looking for the stairs, Doc, it’s left and left again and then, and this is the trick, right. . . .”
The Child’s History said:
Worst among the weapons of the Line is something you may not think