had been taking his sweet time getting to Greenbank. Lowry had struck too soon. He was not yet sure whether he would or would not be punished for his error of judgment. Likely he would.
“I have no idea, Linesman. Creedmoor and I have not been intimates for many years. Do you want to hear all our gossip? Do you want to pry and sniff into our intimate secrets?”
It was possible to track the movements of the signaling device, but not with precision. The device could be tracked to within a mile or two of its location, depending on various conditions—bad weather interfered with the transmission, as for some reason did the presence of substantial populations of Folk. It had been dreadful in the House. And the signals, of course, took hours to receive and decode. Five hours ago, Creedmoor and the target had been a few miles northwest of Greenbank. Where were they now?
Fanshawe blinked his left eye. The swelling was nearly gone. “Are you a virgin, Linesman? Have your masters permitted you to mate? Do they consider you good breeding stock?”
Lowry clapped his gloved hands, and his attendants approached, carrying a low steel folding table. On the table, arranged neatly, were three Guns, grips facing Lowry, deadly muzzles facing safely away.
An attendant handed Lowry a hammer. It had a head of pig iron and a shaft that Lowry had to grip in both hands. He raised it over his head and crashed it down on the leftmost weapon, so that the table rang like a cracked bell and shook and sparks flew from the steel. Behind the ringing, there was something like screaming at the edge of Lowry’s hearing. He drew the hammer back—and again—and again and again until he was red-faced and sweating.
Lowry tore off the mask and breathed heavily.
The table—and the earth around it—was littered with the bright silver coils and broken black wood of the Guns. Their demonic blood was a thin and sulfurous scattering of powder.
“There’s an end to them, then.” Lowry threw the hammer aside and gasped for breath. “Your master’s gone, now, Fanshawe. Gone back to its Lodge. And left you all alone. It’ll come back, I know, with some new servant. You won’t.”
There was a satisfying change in the Agent’s bearing. Now that his master was gone, he hung limply. Now he looked frightened, old, weak. His bruises blackened, and his left eye began to bleed again.
“Cut him down. Harmless now. Not so clever now. Right. Let’s get to work.”
CHAPTER 27
OVER THE BORDER
They rode south toward Greenbank across open country. It was just before dawn, and the sky was banded red and gray. Distant trees were black silhouettes.
They rode along the crest of a steep rocky slope. At the foot of the slope, far below, were white rapids; beyond that, wilderness stretched out into the west.
The General rode with Creedmoor, lashed inelegantly to his back. Creedmoor was telling stories.
“. . . so in those days, I was part of Fanshawe’s circle back in Gibson City. Young and new to the Cause. We were the finest fellows in town. All Gibson’s fashionable folk paid court to us.”
Liv gave him no encouragement. She hated the sound of his voice.
“The banks all owed us a cut. No doubt it went to finance some struggle somewhere; I don’t know. Fanshawe was the strategic thinker among us. But so one fine day, Liv, Fanshawe and Casca and I—Oh, Casca! So dark, so beautiful. This was after we’d fished Casca half-dead from the river, a suicide in her black dress, and recruited her into our number. . . .”
Liv’s hands tingled on the reins. The urge to break and flee was so great that she could hardly resist it. Her hands twitched.
“Fanshawe and Casca and I paid a visit, listen, to a certain bank manager, I shouldn’t name him, who had refused our cut; and Fanshawe, cool as you like . . .”
Would he gun her down? Perhaps, perhaps not. He would almost certainly retrieve her, slung over his back most likely, a humiliation she did not wish to endure.
“On another occasion, I recall, Fanshawe . . .”
She clutched the reins. Now, she thought; now or never. While he was lost in his horrible, ugly memories. . . .
Creedmoor fell silent.
The next instant, he yanked on his horse’s reins so that it reared, and he screamed. Had the General not been roped in place, he would have been flung limply to the ground, and most likely rolled helplessly