“He said exactly that,” said John Binder, “using the exact right word.”

  “Ain’t a word if nobody else ever heard of it,” said another of the posse.

  The jail wasn’t far away, and Sheriff Wiley and old man Fiddler led the way to the upstairs cell. Wiley unlocked the heavy door and pushed it inward. The room was larger than Alvin had expected, and there were four cots. Had the number been augmented while they dined?

  Sheriff Wiley was about to relock the door from the outside when he dropped the keys. He bent down to pick them up, but he couldn’t seem to get a grip on them and kept dropping them.

  “I reckon we’ll sleep well enough without locking our door,” said Alvin.

  After the four of them were alone in the room, and Measure verified that Alvin had done a good job of making all the cots firm and soft enough, Alvin asked Marty Laws and John Binder to take turns singing a few songs before they slept. Alvin enjoyed Marty’s sweet tenor, and John Binder’s rumbly bass had real strength to it. Alvin and Measure didn’t mind that Marty and John mostly knew hymns and other religious songs. It’s not as if songs from Philadelphia had much currency on this side of the Appalachians, but everybody knew the common church songs.

  After a while, when Marty claimed he was about sung out, they blew out the lantern and went to sleep. Without any words, they all took their turns being awake and on watch. Nobody came to disturb them, though Alvin was aware of the heartfires of several men who watched the jail from outside. It was all right with Alvin that his enemies seemed to have a healthy respect for his abilities. Maybe that respect would translate into nobody getting attacked or hurt.

  35

  AS FAR AS he knew, Arthur Stuart had everything as ready as it could be, short of actually calling the companies to muster and moving everyone out toward the river. At that point, of course, he would have to decide between hoping the Prophet had a hundred canoes big enough to carry wagons to the far shore, or giving the order to plunge the wagons into the water and cross the river on the bottom. “How long can you hold your breath?” he would ask each householder. They would say something, and he would say, “Hold it longer.” Then they would all drown and float down the river.

  In the meantime, he had absolutely nothing to do. Everything had to wait until Alvin came back from Carthage City.

  Except that Arthur Stuart did not believe Alvin would ever come back from Carthage City.

  In this morose frame of mind, with nothing left to do that needed doing, Arthur Stuart thought of going to Margaret’s house and … and what, grieve her more? She knew even better than he did how dangerous Alvin’s trip to Carthage was. Why did she let him do it?

  As if anybody could stop Alvin from doing anything he decided had to be done. Or, for that matter, persuade him.

  Oh, he had seen Margaret talk him into accepting many an idea that he at first rejected, but that was with matters of learning and logic. She was his teacher, long before being his wife. But when it was a matter of his purpose, his plan, he had often seen it: They would argue it, chew at it, sometimes for hours, sometimes for weeks. But in the end, Margaret always agreed to help him accomplish his aim, reach his goal.

  As she had helped with this one. As Arthur Stuart was helping, too. Whatever the mad plan was.

  He would not go to Margaret, because she would persuade him to be content, and even though he could never, never be content with this, he would act content. He would acquiesce and nobody but Margaret would know how much he hated being compliant.

  Only she could see into his heartfire. She already knew. He did not have to waste her time convincing him of what he already knew. Alvin knew what was right. His plan was the right plan. His plan would create a better, stronger world.

  Even if he wasn’t there to enjoy it.

  Because he was a Maker. Not really even a leader. A Maker.

  Alvin, you stubborn man, the Maker is the one who is part of what he makes. Now you’re making something that you cannot be part of because you’ll be dead. The Unmaker cannot endure a world that has you in it, and you’re handing him—it—the victory. Giving him that very world.

  Because he had nowhere better to go, Arthur Stuart found himself entering the Crystal tower, though he had no reason to be there. It wasn’t going to show him anything that he didn’t already know.

  He wandered idly among the halls, barely noticing whatever the walls were showing.

  “You know what I’m trying to do here, don’t you?” demanded a voice. Calvin Miller. What was he trying to do?

  “Actually, I don’t,” said Arthur Stuart, turning to see Calvin sitting cross-legged on the floor, a single crystal block before him. Calvin’s hand was resting on the block—which seemed as solid as ever. Oh, yes. Something about Calvin taking the Crystal tower apart so that the enemies of knackles wouldn’t be able to use it to see anything.

  “It’s no use,” said Calvin. “I was thinking that I couldn’t dissolve these things because they were made by Alvin, and how could I unmake anything of his making.”

  So it wasn’t taking the tower apart, it was taking the water-blocks apart, turning them back to water.

  “You do know that if you succeed, all the water in the tower will come crashing down on you,” said Arthur Stuart.

  Calvin looked at him disdainfully. “Why else do you think I chose this spot, in the center of all the blocks, at the bottom?”

  “Not sure that’s what Alvin had in mind,” said Arthur.

  “I don’t care what Alvin ‘had in mind,’” said Calvin. “I know what I have in mind. Except how can I destroy Alvin’s greatest work?”

  Arthur heard this and knew it was wrong. Deeply wrong. He thought a while. And said, “This is not his greatest work.”

  “He told me that himself,” said Calvin.

  “No he didn’t,” said Arthur.

  “You weren’t there,” said Calvin.

  “He told you,” said Arthur, “that Crystal City was his best work. The hardest job he ever succeeded at. That’s what he told me, anyway, and he’s not the kind who says one thing to me and another thing to you.”

  Calvin looked up from the block and met Arthur’s gaze. “That’s what I just said, except that you’re right, he would never call it his ‘greatest’ work, because he didn’t think greatness applied to anything he ever did.”

  “Don’t you see the difference?” said Arthur. “He wants you to take down the Crystal tower, the crystal blocks. Those are not Crystal City.”

  Calvin stared at him. Thinking? Enraged? Motionless, anyway.

  “He assigned you to take the actual crystals apart, Calvin. He charged me with keeping Crystal City together. Those are not contradictory.”

  “The people,” said Calvin. “These shortsighted, foolish, gossipy, mean-spirited, confused, childish, self-destructive fools. The ‘city,’ as if that is an actual thing.”

  Arthur Stuart knew the answer, but he knew Calvin knew it, too.

  And after a few moments of silence, Calvin said, “If he gets himself killed in Carthage—”

  “When, not ‘if,’” said Arthur.

  “And if I figure out how to tear these blocks apart and release the water in them, the Crystal City will still exist, because it’s the stupid people.”

  “It’s the good people, the kind people, the ones who use their knacks for bettering the lives of other people.”

  “Have you met anybody like that?” asked Calvin.

  “Yes,” said Arthur Stuart.

  “Name one,” said Calvin, who then immediately corrected himself. “I mean, besides Margaret. And—why not?—you.”

  “And?”

  “Measure,” said Calvin. “Self-righteous, disdainful—”

  “Kind, loyal, supportive, loving Measure,” said Arthur Stuart. “A man worth three of either of us.”

  “And John Binder,” said Calvin. “Annoying as he is, always so nice and soothing.”

  “His knack,” said Arthur Stuart.

  “Never worked on me,” said Calvin.

  “His knack was never to compel, only to invite. You’ve been invited, haven’t you?”

  “Only constantly,” said Calvin.

  “But you refuse.”

  “I want to be part of it,” said Calvin. “Part of the city. I want it.”

  “You want to be in command of it,” said Arthur Stuart. “I don’t.”

  “Which I suppose is why he put you in command, and put me in charge of breaking what can’t be broken.”

  Those words struck Arthur Stuart with real force. “He wouldn’t have asked you to do what can’t be done,” said Alvin.

  “And yet he did.”

  “No, no, we’re both thinking of it wrong. Alvin never tries to Unmake anything.”

  “What else would you call it?”

  “Don’t you see, Calvin? He doesn’t want you to tear down the tower or break apart the crystals.”

  “That’s kind of what he said he wanted me to do.”

  Arthur Stuart knelt down to be on the same level as Calvin. “Cal,” he said, “he doesn’t want you to Unmake the crystals. He wants you to make them into water.”

  Calvin stared at him. “That’s the same…”

  “Maybe,” said Arthur Stuart, “you need to get out from under the whole tower before you make it into water.”

  Calvin smiled wryly. “The Maker is the one who is part of what he makes.”

  “The Maker is not the one who deliberately drowns himself in a flood of his own making,” said Arthur Stuart.

  Calvin’s hand was still on the block that lay on the floor in front of him. “To make these things, it took a tiny trace of the Maker’s blood, and then a strong will to get the water to bind together using that blood, and become larger, and solid, in the shape of a block. But what is the shape of water?”

  “Whatever you tell it to be.”

  “Does it take new blood?” asked Calvin.

  “I don’t think you have enough blood in your body to turn all these blocks back into water. I’ll offer mine, as far as it goes, but I can’t fulfill Alvin’s instructions if I’m a bloodless, desiccated corpse.”

  “So I use the blood that’s already incorporated in the blocks. Alvin’s in most, mine in a few. Yours in none.”

  “I once offered Alvin some of my blood, and he said, ‘It’s the Maker, not his friend, who is part of what he makes.’”

  “Alvin doesn’t want me to serve the Unmaker,” said Calvin.

  “Never,” said Arthur Stuart.

  “Make them into water,” said Calvin.

  “Shouldn’t we get out from under the main tower, Calvin?” asked Arthur Stuart.

  “Yes, yes, you’re right. It won’t work if my plan is to have the water unmake me.”

  Arthur Stuart realized something. “Because the Unmaker is never a part of his own unmaking.”

  Calvin reached up a hand. “I’ve been sitting here a long time, I’m not sure if my legs will even work.”

  Arthur Stuart took Calvin’s hand and pulled him up into a squat, and then to his feet, standing tall. About Arthur’s height.

  “A minute before I try to walk,” said Calvin.

  “I’ve got all the time in the world.” Which was Arthur’s way of saying, Take your time, but don’t take forever.

  Still gripping Arthur’s hand, Calvin took one step. His hand pressed and pulled on Arthur, trying to use him to keep his balance. Arthur cooperated, until he was embracing Calvin, and Calvin was embracing him in order to maintain his balance.

  “Keep holding on,” said Arthur. “Your balance will come back to you.”

  “You hope,” said Calvin.

  But even in saying those dismissive words, Calvin’s strength and flexibility returned, his balance returned, and he let go of Arthur Stuart’s strong but exhausted hand.

  Together the two of them walked toward the egress, Arthur Stuart always close by in case Calvin stumbled, which he did, several times, but never fell because Arthur was right there.

  Outside the building, there were several passersby who saw them. Maybe they wondered at these two longtime rivals helping each other. Maybe they didn’t know or even care what was going on.

  Calvin sat down on the sheep-mown grass, though no sheep were close by today. Did they know there was going to be a flood?

  “So how do you make water out of a block of crystal?” asked Calvin. Arthur Stuart knew he wasn’t really asking him. He was asking himself.

  “Can you find the blood traces?” asked Arthur Stuart.

  There was a nearby block on the grass. Arthur and Calvin both looked closely at it. A thin bead of red appeared on top, then began to glide down the face of the block. It never grew. It reached the edge and then dripped off the tilted block into the grass.

  “Water,” whispered Calvin.

  The block shape was instantly gone. Instead, water splashed and gurgled, running over the meadow along the downward slope leading to the river.

  “I need to channel it toward the south, not the river,” said Calvin.

  “Then do it,” said Arthur Stuart.

  The ground heaved slightly under them as the slope began to guide the water to the south. Another jolt and Arthur Stuart could see that between the brow of the hill and the pathway down toward the river, there was now a slight ridge of earth that would channel any water away from the river.

  “I think that does it,” said Arthur Stuart. “But if you could do that, why haven’t you ever done it before?”

  “I didn’t know I could do it,” said Calvin. “I never tried. I never thought of doing it.”

  “You live and you learn,” said Arthur Stuart.

  “I don’t think it would be wise of me to bring the whole thing down at once,” said Calvin.

  “It’s your job, to do as you see fit,” said Arthur.

  “I’d feel safer if you weren’t here,” said Calvin. “I mean, I feel that you’d be safer.”

  “I am of the same opinion,” said Arthur.

  Calvin looked at him oddly.

  “What?” asked Arthur.

  “For a moment there…”

  Arthur shrugged.

  “You sounded like him,” said Calvin.

  Arthur laughed. “You don’t know my knack, then?”

  “Didn’t know you had one,” said Calvin. “I mean, I never gave it a thought. Of course you have a knack.”

  “For a while I lost it,” said Arthur. “When Alvin changed me. When he made it so the slave catchers couldn’t identify me anymore. But in the years since then, little by little, it came back to me, as strong as ever.”

  “Your body remembered itself?”

  “Maybe,” said Arthur. “But I figured it was Alvin that remembered how I was, and over time kept trying to give me back my knack without making me identifiable to the catchers again.”

  “You never asked him?”

  “He was ashamed of having lost me my knack. And it was all a long time ago, when I lost it and when it came back. Might have been my own body remaking itself. Or Alvin. Or some angel, for all I know. Or myself, in a dream, knowing more than I knew that I knew.”

  “It’s all pretty vague,” said Calvin.

  “Just when I think I know how knacks work,” said Arthur Stuart, “something happens that doesn’t fit, so I have to tweak my ideas a little. Or a lot.”

  Calvin nodded.

  “It’s the way of the world,” Arthur said. “It works, whether we understand it or not.”

  “What works?”

  “Breathing. Walking. Sleeping, waking, dreaming, hoping. Illness, health, anger, peace, love. So much magic in the world,” said Arthur Stuart.

  “Sometimes it seems to me that nothing is actually real,” said Calvin. “Things are just as everything and everybody agreed to make it all work together, but it could all change its mind, a little, a lot, and then there’d be a new set of rules.”

  “And then we have to figure it all out again,” said Arthur.

  “And whether we’re coming to understand how things are, or whether things are as we come to imagine them to be…”

  “Listen to us, philosophizing like old professors,” said Arthur Stuart.

  “Oh, we know way more than any professors anywhere,” said Calvin.

  “I don’t know about that,” said Arthur.

  “We have known a real Maker,” said Calvin. “We’ve seen things change, impossible things.”

  “Blocks of liquid water that you can build with,” said Arthur.

  “And crystals that can be turned into water,” said Calvin. “Run along now, Mr. Stuart.”

  “I imagine things will go swimmingly for you now,” said Arthur.

  Calvin laughed at the pun.

  And at that moment, for the first time he could remember, Arthur Stuart thought he saw why Alvin loved Calvin, despite all that Calvin had done. Alvin’s brother, so close to being a Maker, was like anybody else, trying to figure out his place in the world, if he had one. And at this moment, he had found something. A way to be.

  Calvin got up and started back toward the entrance to the tower.

  “I hope you’re not going inside again,” said Arthur Stuart, tagging along for the present.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing. Do I have to be touching a block to change it? I don’t know the rules.”

  “Make the rules,” said Arthur.

  “Oh, obviously,” said Calvin. “Everybody knows that.”

  They stood beside a wall near the entrance. Even on the outside of the structure, there were visions in the crystal blocks. A movement in one block caught Arthur’s eye. It was one he thought he had seen before. A man walking away from a building in a faraway city. A large man, a strong one, grizzled and creased and craggy. Mike Fink. Walking away from the city and out toward the woods, where someone was waiting for him.

  Me, thought Arthur Stuart. He’s coming to me. Disappointed, hurt, grieving, weeping. Mike Fink, coming to me.

  And suddenly it became clear to Arthur Stuart. “Well, Calvin,” he said. “I’ve got to go see a man about a cow.”

  Calvin waggled the fingers of one hand in farewell.

  With that, Arthur walked away, upslope a little, and then down the slope the other way, toward the town.