“Tell Margaret I sent you home like she asked me to.”

  “Does Margaret know about those visions my mother saw in the wall?”

  Taleswapper was walking down toward the mill, toward Alvin’s childhood home. He was a thin man, but he didn’t walk away from good food if it was offered. And Mother would offer.

  Arthur Stuart. Nobody understood what Alvin was trying to do as well as Arthur Stuart did.

  But why not Measure? Measure’s prepared, he really is my brother, he …

  Not my job now.

  When Measure came up the hill to meet Alvin, he looked around. “Already gone?” he asked.

  Alvin answered, “Already at my place at table, eating the sad little scraps of food you know that Mother will probably find for him.”

  “So, probably the best meal of his life?” asked Measure.

  “You know he ate at our table more than once, years gone by.”

  “When we were poor, and had precious little to feed him.”

  “It’s Taleswapper. He knows what we had, he knows what we shared, it was a feast to him.”

  “What did he need to say to you?” asked Measure.

  “He said I was done. My work. Done.”

  “That’s just crazy talk. The hard part’s just beginning.”

  “But my part of the work is done.”

  “He doesn’t get to decide that!” said Measure.

  “He didn’t decide. I didn’t decide. It’s just … time.”

  “Well, I’m not taking over your job.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “You don’t think I’m ready,” said Measure.

  “I think you’re the readiest man in Crystal City.”

  “But not my job.”

  “Don’t know. Taleswapper thought he knew, and he’s a clever man, but if Arthur Stuart is ready to step up—”

  “Arthur’s just a … just a lad.”

  “Older than I was, by double, when I cut a stone out of the rock without hands.”

  “Which he cannot do. And I cannot do.”

  “Good thing we don’t need a stonecutter, then, isn’t it?”

  “Alvin,” said Measure. “How can you let it go so easy?”

  Alvin shook his head. “Trying to let it go,” he said. “It isn’t easy.”

  “That’s what all the goodbyes were about last night,” said Measure.

  “Probably. I didn’t know why. I just had to see Mother and Father again. And the sisters, and—”

  “That work isn’t yours anymore, either, is it.”

  “They don’t need me to teach them a thing. They taught me all they could. Father showed me how a man controls himself, and doesn’t let himself get sucked into wickedness.”

  “All we need now is Reverend Philadelphia Thrower, to tell us what God, or the devil—”

  “Unmaker.”

  “Wants us to do,” said Measure.

  “Thrower had a job to do,” said Alvin, “and he hasn’t done it yet.”

  “Not for lack of trying,” said Measure.

  “I’ll go home to my wife and you go home to yours,” said Alvin. “We can stand up taller, because we no longer have to carry such a burden around with us.”

  “My burden wasn’t all that heavy,” said Measure. “Don’t know if I want to give it up yet.”

  Alvin smiled. “Let’s get home.”

  Measure followed Alvin into the Greensong, and it took only two days to reach the watchpoint on the eastern road. Crystal City would be glad to see them.

  26

  ELIZA SAT IN the chair nearest the wall, so she could disappear. This wasn’t a meeting that she wanted anyone to remember her attendance at. The trouble was that for so many years, every aspect of her bearing had been bent toward attracting attention. Favorable attention. Delighted attention. And even as she tried to do nothing, she saw every man in the room turn his gaze toward her a couple of seconds at a time, and no one looked disapproving. Not even the Scottish minister, whose presence here nobody bothered to explain. Which meant everybody else knew, and she was left out.

  Why was she here at all? Why had Calvin dragged her to a place where her very presence would mark her as his paramour, his leman, his girl? And he refused to tell her what the meeting was about, only this: Sometimes everybody has to do their part.

  Well, what’s my part, Calvin? What makes me the only woman in this room? Who decided? Not me.

  Eliza did not like it when other people made decisions for her. Or dragged her along without telling her why. It made her quite angry, and she got angrier the longer the meeting went on without making any sense at all.

  The problem was that when Eliza was angry, it made her more beautiful. It brought fire to her eyes, a quickness of movement, color to her cheeks, and a sharp, sharp wit.

  I am not going to say anything. I’m not even going to think of things I might have said if I were going to speak. This is not a good time for me to blurt something, considering that I have no idea what’s going on.

  Calvin was being quiet, too, so she knew it was something really important—so important that Calvin wasn’t trying to put himself at the head of it.

  The Scottish minister was talking. “Surprise is worthless,” he said. “He’s very quick. As a child he was quick, and now he has so much more knowledge…”

  So the Scottish minister knew him as a child. Him. They did keep speaking of “him” without saying his name.

  “Will the angel come in person?” asked a man, one of the ones who had ridden into Crystal City in a carriage from Wobbish. “We were told there was an angel.”

  “Do you think angels come at my beck and call?” asked the minister, irritated. “He came to me unbidden, and has never come to me afterward at my request, but rather when he had a use for me.”

  “This would be a pretty good time for that,” said another man, who had come by stagecoach from Carthage, along with a few sour-looking men.

  “If you think an angel’s going to do this for you, then you understand nothing,” said the minister. “We are the tools of angels, not angels our tools.”

  The minister really was flustered.

  “Why do you need us at all?” asked the fellow from Wobbish. “Can’t you get close enough to—”

  “No,” said the minister.

  “You expect us to—”

  “No,” said the minister, and he stood up and walked over to the fireplace, which, on a cool night like this, had no fire in it or even a speck of ash. Not a cookfire, then.

  Calvin’s voice tore Eliza out of her reverie about fireplace ash. “What Reverend Thrower is reluctant to tell you is that he tried, many years ago, it was his task alone, and he failed. He couldn’t do it, not to a child.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” said Thrower. “You were just a baby.”

  “A walking, talking, stone-throwing, spy-on-the-preacher baby, yes sir,” said Calvin.

  “I don’t know what you think you saw—”

  “I saw you with the knife, and when you went into the room it wasn’t with you. You came out to get it, and when you went back in you were empty-handed. You don’t have either the heart or the courage to do it, so you turn to these men here, hoping that they’ll have what you lack—a killing instinct, a merciless heart.”

  “I’m a man of God,” said Thrower. “I can’t have a merciless heart and still do my work.”

  “I thought this was your work,” said the man from Wobbish. “You’re setting us up to get kilt.”

  “He won’t kill you! If he was going to kill anybody, it would have been the Bishop of Dublin, and all he did was drop him through the floor. He doesn’t kill.”

  “Sounds like an innocent man,” said one of the thuggish fellows from Carthage.

  “There are no innocent men,” said Thrower.

  True enough, thought Eliza. Just men who haven’t fallen yet.

  “And he knows you, so you can’t come into his sight,” said Calvin, “or he’ll be warned.”

  “None of us know him,” said the man from the Crown Colonies. “He tore apart our social order and stole many of our most valuable servants, but none of us knows his face.”

  Eliza wanted to ask, Then how do you know it was him? Silence, she told herself. Listen.

  “I know how you’ll know who he is,” said Calvin. “When he gets here, he’ll go home to his wife and family, but then he’ll be sent on one errand only.” Calvin turned and used his arm to call their attention to Eliza.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Eliza. “Why are you pointing at me?”

  “He’ll want to talk to her, to learn about her train ride bringing all the Irish with her. They are close, for him to trust her on such an errand.”

  “If they’re so close, why will she help us?”

  “Because she can’t help herself. She will talk to him. She’ll try to kiss him and he’ll refuse. But she won’t let go of him because—”

  “Why!” demanded Eliza. “You know I don’t love any man.”

  Calvin recoiled just the tiniest bit, because her words stung him.

  He does care about me, poor boy.

  “He’s already come to town tonight. He’s already walking up to the door of his house, along with his brother, Measure,” said Calvin.

  “Your brother, too,” said a man.

  “Measure hasn’t noticed me in my whole life,” said Calvin. “I don’t count him as a brother of mine.”

  “So what do we do?’ asked the bossy man from the carriage. “Take him somewhere? Hide him?”

  “Never mind,” said Calvin. He stood up from his place at the table. “You’re too stupid to do the job.”

  The bossy man began to bluster, but the big man from the stagecoach laughed. “Don’t you remember what he is?” he demanded. “You don’t take him, you don’t bind him, you don’t do anything to him, because he can unbind your bindings, he can take you exactly when you think you’re taking him.”

  And now Eliza understood, as she must have understood from the start, but couldn’t believe Calvin would meet with men like these to do—to plan the murder of Alvin Maker.

  “Our only hope,” said Stagecoach man, “is to kill him before he knows he’s being killed.”

  “What’s the fun in that?” asked one of Stagecoach’s henchmen.

  “There’s no fun in this, not for any of us,” said Stagecoach. “Nor is there a speck of gold beyond what our sponsors have already paid to help us get here tonight. But each of us can carry home with us one of the magic crystal blocks from the wall of the city.”

  They all fell silent. “Is that a sure thing?” asked one.

  “If you complete your task,” said Calvin, “the walls won’t hold together. You can pick the blocks up from the ground like fallen petals.”

  “Only bigger and heavier,” said a man.

  “Not as heavy as you might think,” said Calvin.

  “I heard you could make crystal blocks, too,” said the man from Wobbish. “I heard you had all the same powers.”

  Now was the moment Eliza could not contain herself any longer. “Calvin makes the blocks out of water, they show some kind of life inside, like a newt or a lizard running around, but just the shadow and the shape of it. No clear visions. Calvin claims he can do everything Alvin does, but he’s always second-rate.” It was, she knew, the cruelest thing anybody could say to or about Calvin.

  But Calvin bore it. So great was his hatred of his brother that he would not allow himself to be distracted. “My crystals aren’t as good as his crystals,” he said. “Or I’d just make you some and send you on your way.”

  “So the reverend is too merciful to kill him, and you can’t kill him because—”

  “Because he’s my brother,” said Calvin.

  “Because Calvin loves him,” said Eliza.

  “As if you’d know what I do and do not love,” Calvin said scornfully.

  “And you won’t even be there to watch,” said the Wobbish man.

  “If I’m there, people will wonder why I didn’t stop you.”

  “I wonder that right now,” said the Wobbish man. He drew out a pistol.

  The ball rolled out of the barrel. It was only the size of a pea, not a snug fit the way it was supposed to be.

  “I can do,” said Calvin, “what he can do.”

  “You’re saying, don’t try to shoot him,” said the carriage man.

  “I’m saying, don’t even think of what you’re going to do until you do it. Knives will be best. Stab him enough times, and he won’t be able to repair the damage quickly enough.”

  “And he won’t kill us?” said Stagecoach. “Because he surely could, if he could play that trick with the pistol ball.”

  “Not a trick,” said Calvin, picking up the pea-sized ball from the floor and tossing it to the man. “Not a trick. He’s a Maker, don’t you understand? The world is too small to hold a Maker. He’s too powerful, he takes away other men’s power and freedom.”

  The Wobbish man said, as if he had said it before, “Alvin Miller Junior got no respect for any man’s knack except his own.”

  The meeting broke up soon enough, and then Calvin walked Eliza back to her cabin. “Why do you think I’ll help you kill that good man?” she said.

  “Oh, don’t be stupid,” said Calvin. “They can’t kill him. He’s quicker than all their knives. I wager not one will even nick his skin.”

  “Then what is this for?” asked Eliza.

  “Because I will be the one who shouts the warning, so he has time to soften their knives or whatever he might choose to do.”

  “You plan to save your brother from a murder plot you arranged yourself?”

  “This way, I know who the killers are and when they’ll strike.”

  “And what will happen to all these men you fooled?”

  “Whatever Crystal City thinks to do with them.”

  “No,” said Eliza. “You plan to use your Maker powers to kill them all. Because if any of them is taken alive, he can name you and all the part you played in this.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” said Calvin. “So if I have to silence them, I reckon that’s on you.”

  “Oh, Calvin, your stupidity and carelessness and vanity—I’m not responsible for those.”

  “But you’ll help me get out of a jam.”

  “Why will I do that?”

  “Because you were at the meeting. Because everybody knows that you are my—”

  “You are my paramour?” asked Eliza. “If you think anyone who knows you will imagine that I came up with any of your mad antics, you are the only one who believes it. Nobody blames anybody but you for the things you do.”

  “You don’t love me,” said Calvin. He didn’t look crestfallen, but in fact he was hurt by her display of disloyalty.

  “I said that I don’t love any man. You’re still a boy, Calvin.”

  He sat down on the edge of her bed, looking angry, looking sad.

  Since Eliza clearly had the upper hand, she went on. “You never told me that your plan included the murder of your brother—who is, in truth, a good man.”

  “And I’m not?”

  “So you desperately try to prove.”

  “I’m not plotting anybody’s murder. Alvin cannot be killed. These men want to kill him, and, when they make their attempt, they’ll be exposed.”

  “Alvin can’t be killed?”

  “He heals himself too quickly to die. And he can immobilize or disarm any enemy, even at a distance. Who can kill him?”

  “Poison?” asked Eliza.

  “Do you think that little gang of killers would use poison? They’d probably end up spilling it, or accidentally adding it to their own soup.”

  “Meaning that you have no preparation for poison, no way of countering it.”

  “Alvin can destroy poison in his own body or anyone else’s.”

  “What you’re saying is that Alvin is the real thing, and the idea that you can do everything Alvin does is all brag. Or wish. Or hope.”

  “I learn more every day, and I have Alvin’s example to guide me into my self-training.”

  “How is that working out?” asked Eliza.

  “Because Alvin did it, I knew that it was possible to heal my own broken bone. So when I fell from a roof and broke my ankle, I was able to manipulate the bones back into place and knit them together.”

  “I’m impressed. Did anyone else see this miracle?”

  “What’s to see?” said Calvin. “It happened inside my leg.”

  “Which leg?”

  “The one that got broken,” said Calvin.

  Eliza smiled at him. “You’re not a kind person, Calvin. You have a lot of malice stored up. But I won’t betray you and your little plot, Calvin. Because I’m quite confident that, in the end, you’ll betray yourself without anybody else’s help.”

  “You are not just an observer here, Eliza. These men don’t know who Alvin is, not by face. So you will have to greet him with a kiss.”

  “Will I? Have to?”

  “And he will push you away. No other man would push you away, rejecting the kiss.”

  “I’m slightly flattered,” said Eliza.

  “Not only can I heal my own broken bone, I can dissolve anyone else’s. One bone, perhaps. Or two. Or ten.”

  “Why not all of them, and leave me in a puddle on the floor?”

  “Shall I demonstrate? Pick a bone you don’t think you’ll ever need again.”

  “I believe you, Calvin,” said Eliza. “Just as I believe you stupidly threatened a person on whose loyalty you depend.”

  “I don’t count on anyone but myself.”

  “But Calvin, you aren’t reliable enough to be counted on.”

  Calvin smiled in a way that he clearly thought would be enigmatic. Then he kissed her cheek.

  27

  IT WAS AFTER supper when Margaret opened the door to find Calvin’s paramour Eliza there. Margaret graciously invited her in, with the good manners she had learned from Mistress Modesty so many years ago. “Always treat your enemies far more kindly than they deserve, more kindly than they would ever treat you. It confuses them.”

  Soon they were sitting at the small table in the nook just off the kitchen, sipping a decent-quality tea, brewed in the pot, not in the cup. “Enough small talk,” said Eliza at last. “I know I don’t have to tell you anything, because you’ve seen it all in my heartfire.”