Read Online The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman - Free Book Online Page A

. . .
    The smoke thickened. Billows of it crossed the room back and forth like cavalry charges. Voices echoed and overlapped. What always unnerved Creedmoor was that though each voice was different, they were also the same. They sounded in his head and they sounded in his voice, with only a crude approximation of Abban’s accent or a mockery of Jen’s lilt or Fanshawe’s drawl or an echo of the thud and snarl of the Guns. It was horribly unpleasant, and enough to make a man wonder if he was mad.
    When he threw open the door and let the smoke pour out, it was nearly morning, and Josiah was muttering in his sleep. Creedmoor walked away quickly before his master could decide the old man needed to be killed after all.

CHAPTER 5
    SMILE THROUGH ADVERSITY
    Dr. Lysvet Alverhuysen’s coach traveled west, through Koenigswald’s farmlands, and across the border into Sommerland, and along a high cliff road that looked over the vast gray Northern Ocean, and south across the moors, and up into the pines. Other travelers came and went—businessmen, widows, scholars, doctors, couriers, the idle rich on tour. Sometimes there was pleasant conversation; sometimes Maggfrid sat in deep silence and Liv read, or stared at the passing skies. Mail was picked up and dropped off. The coach bounced along the dirt roads that cut through the forests, narrow channels between dark walls of pine. A few logging towns and the occasional inn disrupted the green immensity. It got colder as they slowly gained altitude. They changed coaches twice, and both times Liv was convinced she was going to lose something vital from her luggage, though she couldn’t think what; already most of what she’d brought seemed unnecessary. She’d taken to wearing her hair down.
    There was a certain casual and vaguely decadent camaraderie on the coaches, and Liv spent several of her nights drinking wine by the fireplace of a drafty log-built inn with young men of business, or a certain eager young student of Natural Philosophy on his way to a symposium. On those nights, Maggfrid sat protectively nearby, or stood with the horses, or went walking alone in the woods. Liv wrote a letter to Agatha— Agatha, my dear, I have become quite daring! You should see me.  . . . But the coach bounced and she spilled ink on the page, and anyway decided she would prefer to keep such matters to herself. Some days she and Maggrid were alone, and she wrote in her journal, and the scratching of her pen and the clatter of hooves and the ticking of the golden watch passed the time.
    The road ran farther south and west, and wound through the mountains, the blue-white peaks of which rose on either side like a wall built by God at the end of the world—like ghostly fairy-tale giants charged by God with guarding the border of creation.
    That was what they still called them—the World’s End Mountains—though for four hundred years there had been another world beyond them. And one afternoon they turned a corner and the trees parted and Liv looked out west across golden plains, spread out far below her and out beyond the horizon. She gasped as she made out forests and lakes and even toylike towns and out beyond in the north the stark black scrawl of the Line. A distant eagle soared overhead. Her heart surged with mad excitement. Maggfrid leaned suddenly over her and stuck his great head and shoulders out the window and yelled a nonsensical echoing shout of joy. The coach rocked on the edge of a steep drop and Liv, laughing, tried to pull him back in.

    The mail coach left them in Fort Sloten, a tiny way station up in the foothills of the World’s Ends. From Fort Sloten, riders took the mail off along steep trails north and south and west.
    Liv and Maggfrid followed the trail down into Fort Blue on foot. She’d had the forethought, before leaving, to consult with Professor Woch of the Botanical Institute, who was a keen hiker, and consequently she wore quite excellent fitted boots. Even so