The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman

upturned horseshoe. Some simple people believed that iron would keep away wild Hillfolk, on the theory that it reminded them of their brethren’s chains. Creedmoor doubted its efficacy even on Hillfolk, and certainly it was wasted on him.
    His master said,
    —Yes. In there. This will do. They have a fire.
    There was a fire burning inside, and smoke at the chimney. Two dogs chained to a post in the ground outside started to whine and bark. Dogs didn’t like Creedmoor. They smelled the demon that rode him.
    —Our kin will join us in fire. First kill the inhabitants.
    With a sigh, Creedmoor knocked on the door.

    The cabin was cluttered with pots and pans, with pelts and hooves and animal bones, with the worn wooden paraphernalia of farmer’s work. Two-tined forks and a battered old hoe. A churn? Creedmoor wasn’t sure what half of it was. He hadn’t done a day’s honest work in his life since he was a printer’s apprentice back in Lundroy.
    A low fire smoldered in the corner. The cabin had one inhabitant, by the name of Josiah, a wiry old man, bent like a fishhook, with a beard like a goat’s.
    Creedmoor didn’t kill him. Instead, though it made his master displeased— because it made his master displeased—Creedmoor decided to drink with him.
    Josiah had some awful poisonous stuff in a wooden keg, which he sipped from a ladle, and had already been unsteady drunk when he opened the door.
    “Come in,” he’d said. “Come in, I got nothing left to steal. My only daughter ran off to Jasper City with a swarthy fellow to be an actress, so you won’t be stealing her neither. Sit down! Have a drink.”
    “Don’t mind if I do.” Creedmoor sat. In the interests of caution, he refused Josiah’s brew—there were limits, after all, to the strength the Guns could give a man—and he drank from a bottle he’d stolen from the riverboat. Noticing a battered old rifle on the wall, and some tattered flags, Creedmoor asked if the old man had been a soldier, and soon they got talking about long-forgotten wars.
    —Kill him and be done with it, Creedmoor.
    —I don’t see the necessity.
    The voice sulked and snarled and scraped in Creedmoor’s head. He ignored it.
    Josiah had fought for the Delta Baronies thirty years ago, in the north, in a battle in which he still to this day believed was in support of an alliance with the young Red Valley Republic—though Creedmoor happened to know that the local Baron was acting secretly in furtherance of a scheme of the Guns. Creedmoor didn’t bother to set the old man straight. He made up some wild lies about his own military heroism. The old man swallowed it all up, eagerly, drinking and talking and talking . . . A lonely life out there, Creedmoor thought.
    When the old man finally fell over in a dead drunk, Creedmoor carried him outside and left him with his barking dogs in the yard, and went back inside and shuttered the windows and bolted the door.
    —We told you to kill him, Creedmoor.
    —I didn’t see the necessity. Don’t worry, my bloodthirsty friend. I’m sure there’s killing to come.
    —A sacrifice. Blood. To bring the Lodge here.
    Creedmoor sighed, and rubbed his graying temples. Then he unbolted the door, stepped outside, and shot one of the dogs. As he bolted the door once again, he said:
    —That will do.
    —A dog. Undignified.
    —I know your preferences. Do you care enough to punish me? Time’s wasting.
    —Then stoke the fire.
    —Good.
    —We will remember this.
    —Of course.
    He heaped the fire with wood, and then with pelts, and then poured raw spirits onto it, and soon the cabin was dark with smoke, and red flames leapt high on the edges of Creedmoor’s hazy vision, and the fire roared and burning logs snapped with gunshot noises in a mad frantic rhythm. The Song of the Guns, the echo of their terrible voices. Creedmoor’s master said,
    —Listen.

    Creedmoor’s master’s name was Marmion. It hardly mattered, though; they were all much the