“Aye, and no way to stop them. Not that anyone still knows.”

“Oh,” he said, and that was all-just oh. But he left his place by Rusher’s head for a moment when they came to the weedy track leading into Citgo, walking across to look at the old disused guard-hut. In her childhood there had been a sign on it reading authorized personnel only, but it had blown away in some windstorm or other. Will Dearborn had his look and then came ambling back to the horse, boots puffing up summer dust, easy in his new clothes.

They went toward town, a young walking man in a flat-crowned hat, a young riding woman with a poncho spread over her lap and legs. The starlight rained down on them as it has on young men and women since time’s first hour, and once she looked up and saw a meteor flash overhead-a brief and brilliant orange streak across the vault of heaven. Susan thought to wish on it, and then, with something like panic, realized she had no idea what to wish for. None at all.

4

She kept her own silence until they were a mile or so from town, and then asked the question which had been on her mind. She had planned to ask hers after he had begun asking his, and it irked her to be the one to break the silence, but in the end her curiosity was too much.

“Where do ye come from, Mr. Dearborn, and what brings ye to our little bit o’ Mid-World… if ye don’t mind me asking?”

“Not at all,” he said, looking up at her with a smile. “I’m glad to talk and was only trying to think how to begin. Talk’s not a specialty of mine.” Then what is. Will Dearborn? she wondered. Yes, she wondered very much, for in adjusting her position on the saddle, she had put her hand on the rolled blanket behind… and had touched something hidden inside that blanket. Something that felt like a gun. It didn’t have to be, of course, but she remembered the way his hands had dropped instinctively toward his belt when she had cried out in surprise.

“I come from the In-World. I’ve an idea you probably guessed that much on your own. We have our own way of talking.”

“Aye. Which Barony is yer home, might I ask?”

“New Canaan.”

She felt a flash of real excitement at that. New Canaan! Center of the Affiliation! That did not mean all it once had, of course, but still-

“Not Gilead?” she asked, detesting the hint of a girlish gush she heard in her voice. And more than just a hint, mayhap.

“No,” he said with a laugh. “Nothing so grand as Gilead. Only Hemphill, a village forty or so wheels west of there. Smaller than Hambry, I wot.”

Wheels, she thought, marvelling at the archaism. He said wheels.

“And what brings ye to Hambry, then? May ye tell?”

“Why not? I’ve come with two of my friends, Mr. Richard Stock-worth of Pennilton, New Canaan, and Mr. Arthur Heath, a hilarious young man who actually does come from Gilead. We’re here at the order of the Affiliation, and have come as counters.”

“Counters of what?”

“Counters of anything and everything which may aid the Affiliation in the coming years,” he said, and she heard no lightness in his voice now.” The business with the Good Man has grown serious.”

“Has it? We hear little real news this far to the south and east of the hub.”

He nodded. “The Barony’s distance from the hub is the chief reason we’re here. Mejis has been ever loyal to the Affiliation, and if supplies need to be drawn from this part of the Outers, they’ll be sent. The question that needs answering is how much the Affiliation can count on.”

“How much of what?”

“Yes,” he agreed, as if she’d made a statement instead of asking a question. “And how much of what.”

“Ye speak as though the Good Man were a real threat. He’s just a bandit, surely, frosting his thefts and murders with talk of 'democracy' and 'equality'?”

Dearborn shrugged, and she thought for a moment that would be his only comment on the matter, but then he said, reluctantly:” ’twas once so, perhaps. Times have changed. At some point the bandit became a general, and now the general would become a ruler in the name of the people.” He paused, then added gravely, “The Northern and West'rd Baronies are in flames, lady.”

“But those are thousands of miles away, surely!” This talk was upsetting, and yet strangely exciting, too. Mostly it seemed exotic, after the pokey all-days-the-same world of Hambry, where someone’s dry well was good for three days of animated conversation.

“Yes,” he said. Not aye but yes-the sound was both strange and pleasing to her ear. “But the wind is blowing in this direction.” He turned to her and smiled. Once more it softened his hard good looks, and made him seem no more than a child, up too late after his bedtime. “But I don’t think we’ll see John Farson tonight, do you?”

She smiled back. “If we did, Mr. Dearborn, would ye protect me from him?”

“No doubt,” he said, still smiling, “but I should do so with greater enthusiasm, I wot, if you were to let me call you by the name your father gave you.”

“Then, in the interests of my own safety, ye may do so. And I suppose I must call ye Will, in those same interests.”

“Tis both wise and prettily put,” he said, the smile becoming a grin, wide and engaging. “I-” Then, walking as he was with his face turned back and up to her, Susan’s new friend tripped over a rock Jutting out of the road and almost fell. Rusher whinnied through his nose and reared a little. Susan laughed merrily. The poncho shifted, revealing one bare leg, and she took a moment before putting matters right again. She liked him, aye, so she did. And what harm could there be in it? He was only a boy, after all. When he smiled, she could see he was only a year or two removed from jumping in haystacks. (The thought that she had recently graduated from haystack-jumping herself had somehow fled her mind.)

“I’m usually not clumsy,” he said. “I hope I didn’t startle you.”

Not at all. Will; boys have been stubbing their toes around me ever since I grew my breasts.

“Not at all,” she said, and returned to the previous topic. It interested her greatly. “So ye and yer friends come at the behest of the Affiliation to count our goods, do you?”

“Yes. The reason I took particular note of yon oil patch is because one of us will have to come back and count the working derricks-”

“I can spare ye that, Will. There are nineteen.”

He nodded. “I’m in your debt. But we’ll also need to make out-if we can-how much oil those nineteen pumps are bringing up.”

“Are there so many oil-fired machines still working in New Canaan that such news matters? And do ye have the alchemy to change the oil into the stuff yer machines can use?”

“It’s called refinery rather than alchemy in this case-at least I think so-and I believe there is one that still works. But no, we haven’t that many machines, although there are still a few working filament-lights in the Great Hall at Gilead.”

“Fancy it!” she said, delighted. She had seen pictures of filament-lights and electric flambeaux, but never the lights themselves. The last ones in Hambry (they had been called “spark-lights” in this part of the world, but she felt sure they were the same) had burned out two generations ago.

“You said your father managed the Mayor’s horses until his death,” Will Dearborn said. “Was his name Patrick Delgado? It was, wasn’t it?”

She looked down at him, badly startled and brought back to reality in an instant. “How do ye know that?”

“His name was in our lessons of calling. We’re to count cattle, sheep, pigs, oxen… and horses. Of all your livestock, horses are the most important. Patrick Delgado was the man we were to see in that regard. I’m sorry to hear he’s come to the clearing at the end of the path, Susan. Will you accept my condolence?”

“Aye, and with thanks.”