The Glass Sentence (The Mapmakers Trilogy) (17 page)

Calixta chuckled, acknowledging the compliment. “Is that what happened? Well, that makes it all clear.”

“If you ask me,” Theo continued, unstoppable now that his story had taken shape, “it’s a cruel thing to do. Abandon your niece, who has no one else in the world, for an actress?” Sophia’s face was so warm that it seemed to burn, and the heavy weight in her stomach had begun to ache. “But that’s the kind of man he is.” He sighed. “Of course this whole journey to Nochtland is hopeless. Sophia’s not going to find him, and if she does, he’ll just tell her to go home. I’m not sticking around to see
that
,” he grimly concluded. Sophia felt her eyes fill with tears—from the truth and the lie both—and she brushed them away angrily as the train began to slow.

“Well, better wake the poor girl. We’re finally getting to New Orleans.”

Theo’s head appeared at the edge of the bunk. “I’m awake,” Sophia said, her voice choked.

He smiled innocently. “Get up, then. We’re here.”

The train began pulling into the station and Calixta opened the door to the compartment to call for a porter. As Sophia climbed down, her pack on one shoulder, the man came into the compartment and began carrying out Calixta’s trunks.

“I’m taking a coach to the dock,” the pirate said, putting on her hat. “And, if you like, I’ll take you to the depot where you can negotiate for horses. If that’s really what you want to do.”

Theo was about to follow her out, but Sophia grasped his arm. “I heard everything you said about Shadrack.”

He grinned. “Pretty good, right?”

“Pretty good?”
Sophia exclaimed, tears again filling her eyes despite her effort to control them. “How could you say that about Shadrack?
An actress?
” To her dismay, Theo laughed. “It’s not funny!”

“Come on, lighten up. You’re taking this way too seriously.”

Sophia felt her cheeks once again turning bright red. “I don’t see anything wrong with being serious. This
is
serious! I heard what you said about not sticking around. I never asked you to stick around. You can leave whenever you want. I’ll go by myself.”

“Hey,” Theo said, taking her arm. “Calm down—it was just a story I told her. You said not to tell her about Shadrack. I thought it was a pretty good way to distract her.”

“Were you lying? About all of it?”

“Of course I was lying—that’s what you said to do.”

“I didn’t tell
you to
lie
. I just said not to tell her anything. How am I supposed to know when you’re telling the truth?”

“Sophia, what I told her didn’t mean anything. Trust me.”

She gave a short laugh and looked away. “Right.
Trust you
.” She realized that new passengers were boarding. “We have to go,” she said tersely, turning on her heel to leave. Theo shook his head, then followed her.

Sophia stalked off the train and saw Calixta at the far end of the platform, directing the porters as they tied her trunks to the top of a coach. As Sophia started to walk toward her, she heard a sudden shout. She wheeled around and saw them instantly: three—no, four—men with identically scarred faces running along the platform. For a moment she stood frozen. Then she gripped her pack and burst into a run, her feet pounding against the wooden floorboards.

Theo soon reached and then passed her. It took Calixta, whose trunks were now securely tied to the roof of the coach, only a moment to grasp the situation. With one easy motion she threw open the door and drew her revolver. “Get in!” she shouted. Theo dove in first and Sophia scrambled after him. Calixta put her foot on the step of the open coach and grabbed the luggage rack with her free hand.
“Drive!”
she cried.

The horses sprang into motion and they jerked forward as Calixta leaned gracefully out and fired a single shot at the platform. Sophia watched as the men changed direction and scrambled toward the line of coaches; the horses were rearing in confusion, panicked by the pistol shot. Calixta ducked into the coach and closed the door. “Help me with my hat again, darling, would you?” she asked.

Sophia put her pack aside and tried, with trembling fingers, to pull the pins from Calixta’s hat while the coach jolted madly along the road. “They’re out,” she finally said, tucking them into the hat ribbon.

Calixta shook out her hair and leaned through the window. “Driver,” she called. “Triple the fare if you get us safely to the end of the dock. The ship with the red and white sails.” She pulled her head back in. “They’ll have gotten into a coach by now.”

The streets of New Orleans rushed past. The driver had taken them along the edge of the city, but there was still a fair amount of traffic, and the shouts of people dodging the racing coach could be heard clearly. Sophia glimpsed a fruit stand toppling unceremoniously to the ground as the horses sped by, and a number of yapping dogs set upon them in pursuit.

“Only another minute,” Calixta said, peeking out through the window. “When we get there, leave the coach at once and find the ship with red and white sails.” They nodded. “And watch my hat,” she told Sophia. “Don’t look so grim, sweetheart.” She smiled. “I’m an excellent shot.”

The coach jolted and then jumped as it suddenly reached the dock. “Get out of the way,” the driver shouted. The horses swerved around an upturned cart and a pile of crates collapsed behind it.

Suddenly a loud crack exploded at the rear of the coach, just between Sophia’s head and Calixta’s shoulder. “That’s them,” Calixta said. “Keep your heads down.” She leaned out the window and fired two careful shots. Then they came to a clattering halt. Calixta threw the door open. “Come on then,” she called. “The red and white sails. Tell Burr to come himself, because I’m certainly not leaving my trunks behind.” She stood with her feet planted firmly apart and her eye on their pursuers.

Sophia stumbled out carrying Calixta’s hat and looked anxiously for the sails. Where were they? Where was Theo, for that matter? He had vanished. There were crates everywhere, sailors, a horse with a gleaming black saddle pulling agitatedly on his reins, and two barking dogs with long red tongues. Was Theo hiding somewhere? Sophia crouched behind a pile of wooden crates and glanced down: sawdust and half of a dead fish. For some reason, the air smelled of rum: as if it had
rained
rum. She looked up; where was the ship with red and white sails? The sails were
all
red and white—and blue, and green, and yellow.

Then she saw a number of deckhands running toward Calixta; they had to be coming from her ship. A shot and then another rang out behind her, and she peeked out from behind the crates to see the pirate standing calmly, defending the coach with precise shots while the deckhands slid the trunks off the roof. Sophia stood and prepared to run after them.

But as she turned, she saw Theo some distance away, gesturing urgently to her with one hand; he held a pistol in the other and was walking backward, firing steadily, while a heavyset man beside him carried one of the trunks.
Theo could shoot?

Then, suddenly, Calixta was no longer by the coach. In fact, Sophia realized with horror, the dock was nearly deserted. And there the pirate stood, on the deck of a ship with red and white sails. The ship had been anchored only a stone’s throw away, its sails tightly furled. Now they were catching the wind, fluttering like ribbons. Theo stood beside Calixta on the deck, pointing. He was pointing at Sophia, who was separated from the ship by a line of Sandmen.

I lost track of time!
Sophia realized, aghast. Worse still, she noticed with agitation, she didn’t have her pack. She still held Calixta’s hat, but the precious pack was nowhere to be seen.
I must have left it in the carriage,
she thought frantically.
The Sandmen fired toward the ship; they had not yet seen her. With the hat balanced on her head, Sophia began crawling on hands and knees back toward the coach. Theo, Calixta, and two other pirates were still exchanging volleys with the Sandmen, one of whom was readying his grappling hook.

To Sophia’s relief and surprise, she saw one of the pirates wearing her pack securely on his shoulders.
Calixta must have found it. Now if I can only get to the ship
. She could see the gangway. Five quick dashes would take her to it.

She stood up to run, burst forward, and collided with a tall, slim man wearing a hat even wider than Calixta’s. He held a revolver in one hand and a long sword in the other. With the tip of the revolver he pushed his hat back, revealing a handsome, bearded face and a wide grin. He looked Sophia over appraisingly. “When my sister said to keep her hat safe,” he said, “you really took her at her word.”

“I—I’m sorry,” Sophia stammered.

“Wisest thing you could have done,” he said cheerfully. He tucked the sword into its sheath, took Sophia’s hand, and led her, running, to the gangway of the ship with red and white sails. As they ran, the Sandmen sighted them and immediately changed course. Sophia heard footsteps pounding on the wooden dock, then a spattering of sharp cracks as something splintered. There was silence and then shouts from all sides. A grappling hook bit into the wooden board just beside her foot. Sophia found herself stumbling across the gangplank and onto the deck.

She turned, breathlessly, as the ship pulled away. The dock was abandoned apart from four strange figures: the Sandmen, mired in a thick, black syrup that had trapped them like flies in honey. Sophia squinted, not comprehending. Then a wave of violent dizziness washed over her. She reached for the deck rail and found it had vanished. She sank to her knees. Then her cheek lay against the polished wooden deck, and the whole world had tipped on its side.

16

Seasick

A
FTER
THE
INITIAL
dizziness that pitched her to the deck passed, Sophia propped herself up and watched with queasy awe as the ship swung into motion: Calixta’s men trimmed the sails, shouting to one another across the deck until all the sails were taut with wind. The sun faded behind a passing cloud, and the smell of the ocean suddenly engulfed her. Sophia took a deep breath. When she could speak, she tried to apologize for having risked their departure by losing track of time, but no one seemed to think she had done anything wrong. “You’ll want to thank this lad here for spotting you,” Burr had said, throwing his arm around Theo with a grin, “as I’ve thanked him for being such a fine shot. Molasses, eh? You must have hit four barrels. Those are some sticky scoundrels you left behind on the dock. Natural-born pirate, you are.” Theo beamed, seeming almost bashful in the face of Burr’s compliments.

Furthermore, any inconvenience Sophia might have caused apparently paled alongside the tragedy suffered by one of Calixta’s trunks, which arrived on deck with two bullet holes. She vented her fury on the pirate who had carried it and on her brother for failing to carry it himself. Burr strode across the deck as they left the harbor, calling out casual instructions and shaking off the abuse that Calixta hurled at him.

“Would it make you feel better to put a few bullet holes in Peaches?” Burr asked. “Do, by all means.” He cheerfully gestured toward the unfortunate Peaches, an older man who was tugging on his frilled cuffs with a woeful expression.

“I
should
,” Calixta roared. “Do you know how difficult it is to find petticoats of the right length?”

Peaches shook his head disconsolately. “I’m sorry, Captain Morris.”

“Rather than telling us all about your petticoats, dearest,” Burr said, “perhaps you should check the damage.”

Calixta glared for a moment longer and then opened the trunk. She inspected the clothing in silence with Peaches standing warily in attendance, and finally she looked up with a mollified expression. “Well, it seems my powder-box stopped the bullets. Peaches,” she said icily, “you owe me a new box of face powder.”

“Certainly, Captain; the moment we arrive in port,” he replied, greatly relieved. Calixta went off to her cabin after her trunks. As the pirates moved about with easy laughter and efficiency, Sophia held her head and tried to control the waves of nausea that swept over her.

The pirates were not in the least as she had imagined them. They seemed more like wealthy vacationers, with their extravagant clothing and their nonchalant air. All of them spoke with the precise, almost quaint locution of the Indies. Even the lowliest deckhand seemed to Sophia more like a fancy footman than a sea-toughened bandit.

Theo was already a favorite after his display of marksmanship, and he had been pulled away into conversation with the deckhands at once. “Hey, you all right?” he asked now. Sophia, knowing it was petty but too angry to care, took refuge in her seasickness and would not speak to him. Finally he shrugged and drifted off.

She was rather more inclined to count on the pirates than Theo, since Calixta had saved her pack and Burr had saved
her
; though it would have been simple enough to leave her stranded on the dock.
I’ll have to ask
the pirates for help getting to Nochtland
, Sophia decided, trying to quell the anxiety that only worsened her dizziness. She could only hope that in Nochtland she would find Veressa and that then, somehow, they would rescue Shadrack before something terrible happened to him.

Even after hours of sailing, the violent seasickness would not recede. She resigned herself to sitting inertly, watching the horizon and battling nausea. As evening fell, they reached a spot of calm weather and the air grew pleasantly cool. Calixta called to her from across the deck. “Sweetheart, dinner in my cabin.”

“I’m going to stay here,” Sophia replied. “I feel worse inside. I’m not hungry anyway.”

“Poor thing. All right, feel better.”

Calixta withdrew, and Sophia made an effort to rise so that she could get a better look at the sunset. Overhead, the stars were beginning to appear and the sky curved in one continuous descent from purple to blue to pink. Sophia stared hard at the pink edge of the sky and momentarily felt her nausea subside. A moment later she heard footsteps and turned to see someone walking across the deck toward her.

“They sent me up to keep you company, dear.” Sophia looked curiously at the old woman who stood beside her. She was no taller than Sophia herself and almost as thin. Though she held herself straight and spoke in a clear voice, she looked older than anyone Sophia had ever seen. Her white hair was braided and pinned up on her head in a long coil, and she wore a neatly pressed lilac dress with innumerable pleats in the skirt and sleeves. “I’m Grandmother Pearl,” she said, laying her wrinkled hand on Sophia’s. “Even though I’m nobody’s grandmother.” She smiled, holding Sophia’s hand in both her own. “And you, they tell me, are seasick, poor child.”

“Yes,” Sophia said. She realized suddenly, from the gentle pressure of Grandmother Pearl’s fingers and the way she held her head, that the old woman was blind. “It won’t go away.”

“Ah,” Grandmother Pearl said, smiling. Her small, white teeth shone—not unlike pearls themselves. “I know why. I can feel it here in your palm.”

Sophia blinked. “You can?”

“Of course, love. It’s plain to anyone who takes your hand. You’re not bound to time. Of course, the way you’ve heard it explained probably makes it sound rather worse. No internal clock, is that what they say? No sense of time?”

Sophia felt herself blushing in the growing darkness. “Yes. It’s true that I have—I always lose track of time. It’s not something I’m proud of,” she mumbled.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, love,” Grandmother Pearl said, still smiling. “It’s a rare gift to be unbound from time. Think of it—you are free to drift, free to float, like a ship with no anchor weighing it down.”

Sophia glanced down at the wrinkled hands around her own. “But sometimes you want an anchor.”

The old woman led her over to the chairs on the deck. “And you have one. Don’t you carry a watch around with you? Don’t people always remind you of the hour? Aren’t you surrounded by clocks, ticking away, telling you the time? Aren’t we all?”

“I guess that is true.”

“So what do you need an internal clock for? Trust me, love. You’re better off. In my ninety-three years I’ve met only three others not bound to time, and they were all exceptional people.”

Sophia absorbed this doubtfully. “But why does that make me seasick?” she asked as they sat.

“Why, because we’re sailing through a soup of all the different Ages. When the Ages came apart, the waters were in one place. Now different Ages mix in the sea, so that every cup contains more than a dozen.”

None of Shadrack’s explorer friends had ever mentioned this. Sophia held her face up to the briny air, as if testing the truth of it. “Is that possible?”

“I’ve lived on ships for most of my life, and I’ve seen mysteries that can only be explained in that way.”

“Like what kind of mysteries?”

“Strange cities built on the water’s surface that appear one moment and disappear the next. Selkies and mermen building pockets of sea to contain a single Age. Mostly, I’ve seen peculiar things underwater—fragments, you might say—that seem like broken pieces of many Ages, lost in the currents.”

“So you once had your sight?” Sophia asked, fascinated.

“Yes, I did—although, if you ask me, my sight was somewhat like that anchor we were talking about. Just as you are better off without your sense of time, I am better off without my sense of sight. I know it sounds strange to say it, but it was only when I lost my sight that I began understanding the world around me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, take your palm, for instance. In my youth I might have taken your hand in just the same way, but I would have been looking at your eyes and your smile to get a good sense of who you were, and I wouldn’t even have paid attention to your hand. After I lost my sight, I noticed things I would never have noticed before, distracted as I was by seeing.”

“I think I understand what you mean,” Sophia said. She was suddenly conscious of how much she was relying on Grandmother Pearl’s appearance in order to get a sense of who she was: her hair, her neat dress, the deep wrinkles around her eyes. “So I have to think about what I notice, since I don’t notice time.”

“That’s right, love,” her companion said approvingly. “What else is there that no one else is seeing because they’re looking at the time? You’re not distracted by time, so you’re bound to notice something everyone else doesn’t.” She paused, letting Sophia consider this. “It may take you a while to discover it, mind!” she added, with a laugh.

Sophia smiled. “You’re right.” She looked at Grandmother Pearl’s wrinkled hands. “If you’re ninety-three, that means you lived through the Great Disruption.”

“I did, although I don’t remember it. I was only a baby then. Though I learned of it from my mother. In the United Indies, where everyone’s livelihood depended on constant travel to either side of the Atlantic, the shock was extreme. The old European ports vanished. The colonies in the Americas transformed. And the Baldlands plunged into warfare and chaos and confusion. Imagine hundreds of thousands of people all waking to find the world around them scrambled—all of them solitary exiles from worlds that no longer existed. It seemed the entire continent had gone mad. My mother always spoke of it as a dream—a deep, long dream that left the world changed forever. Then again, my mother was a dream-reader, and she knew better than most that the boundary between waking and dreaming is an uncertain one.”

“Was your mother a”—Sophia hesitated—“pirate, as well?”

“Ah, she was, but piracy was a different thing in those days. Dangerous, underpaid work. Not like now. My mother was raised on ships and never owned a pair of shoes in her life, poor thing. She made her fortune divining the weather and reading dreams. Her life was a hard one. But now—this is the great age of piracy.”

Sophia thought, hearing Shadrack’s voice, that in truth it was the great age of exploration. But she didn’t contradict her. “Captain Morris’s ship is certainly well-off,” she said mildly.

“She’s a good captain. We’re all well treated and we have regular holidays. Burr and Calixta make a good profit—no doubt there—but they’re not greedy; they share it with the rest of us. We none of us have reason to complain. Still, if you saw other ships, you’d see that this one is modest in comparison.” Grandmother Pearl shook her head. “More wealth on one of those than on some of the smaller islands, I swear. The larger islands, of course, are a different story. Have you been to Havana, dear? It’s awash in coins of every kind.”

“I’ve never been to the United Indies,” Sophia admitted. “I’ve never been to the Baldlands, either. In fact, before this trip I’d never been south of New York.”

Grandmother Pearl laughed and patted her hand. “Well, all the more to look forward to. The Baldlands will take your breath away; they always do, the first time.”

“That’s what everyone says.”

“Remember what I told you about a cup of water from the seas? Well, the Baldlands are just like that—only on land. All the different Ages, brought together in a moment.”

“I can’t imagine it,” Sophia said, frowning slightly.

“Well, you don’t see it that way, not all at once,” the old woman explained. “Perhaps just after the Great Disruption you could see the lines of where Ages collided; one street in one century, the next street in another. But now, after more than ninety years, the Ages have settled. In the Triple Eras, for example, the three eras have melded into one. You can’t tell that one building is from the past and another is from the future, or that someone is wearing a mixture of clothing from three different eras, or that an animal from the ancient Age sits beside an animal from a later one. Now it seems just what it is—a single, whole Age derived from three.”

Sophia leaned forward eagerly. “Tell me about the animals. I’ve heard it’s the creatures that are the strangest.”

“There are wondrous animals, it’s true,” Grandmother Pearl agreed “But in the Baldlands you have to be careful how you use those words—animal or creature.’”

“Oh! Why?”

“Because of the Mark of the Vine and the Mark of Iron.” She paused, hearing Sophia’s silence. “Have you heard of them?”

“I’ve read about them.” Sophia recalled the passing mention in Shadrack’s atlas. “But I didn’t really understand them. What are they?”

Grandmother Pearl settled back in her chair. “Well, I’m not surprised. People don’t like to speak of it. Particularly people from the Baldlands. But you won’t understand the place unless you understand the Marks. They’ve always been there, at least since the Great Disruption, but the cruel way of seeing them has come about over time. Would you like to hear the story of how it all started?”

“Of course.”

“It was put to verse by the poet Van Mooring, a man from Nochtland who became a sailor. Every mariner knows it.” She began a slow, mournful song in a voice that spun out over the deck like a fragile thread.

“At Nochtland’s gates of iron strong

The guard kept watch to block the throng

Of those who would have broken through

To see the palace so few knew.

A glimpse of peaks and shining glass

Amidst the gardens thick and vast

Was all the towering gates allowed

To passersby and city crowds