The Golden Specific (33 page)

Broadgirdle's eyes had a faraway look. “I quite understand. And who were these men, Slade?”

This was the dangerous part. Theo had no wish to bring Broadgirdle's wrath down upon any two men working at the State House, and yet his story depended upon their existence. “I didn't recognize them. They were both older gentlemen. Dressed well but not overly so. One with gray hair and a mustache, the other with brown hair and a close beard.” He had given descriptions that could fit half the working population of the State House. He hoped it would be sufficient. “If I see them again I could point them out,” Theo offered.

“That would be helpful,” Broadgirdle agreed. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention.” He glanced at Peel, who had been standing by, looking at turns furious and at turns lost. “Perhaps, Slade, it would be a good idea if you joined us this evening after the election results are in.” Peel now looked injured, as if Theo had won a prize intended for him. “We will be discussing our plans for the future, and I believe you may have an important place in them.”

Theo bowed his head slightly in appreciation. “Certainly, sir! Thank you.”

Broadgirdle turned to Peel. “And now, if you could take a few letters.”

“Of course, sir. Happy to.” Peel carried his portable wooden desk into the inner office.

That desk has seen every word Broadgirdle has dictated for months,
Theo thought
. If only it could talk.
He sat, unsure why the idea of a writing desk that could talk was sticking in his mind. There was some connection, but it was just out of reach. He stared at the surface of his own desk and tried to follow the thought. Then he realized what it was: the writing desk's flat surface reminded him of a map—a memory map that would tell him everything that had transpired in Broadgirdle's office.

Suddenly, Theo pushed back his chair.
But there is a memory map: a map that's been right in front of me and that I've been ignoring like an idiot. The wooden ruler! It isn't a cipher or a message or a reminder. It's a map.

Without bothering to tidy his desk, Theo snatched up his jacket and made for the door. He had to get the wooden rule from Nettie.

• • •

I
NSPECTOR
R
OSCOE
G
REY
was home, for once. Theo watched him through the window with desperate impatience. Grey had already spent twenty minutes dawdling in the piano room with Nettie, looking like the most relaxed person in the world.
Will he never leave?
Theo thought, fiddling with the mustache in his pocket. Finally, nearing fifteen-hour, he stood, patted Nettie gently on the head, and left, closing the door behind him.
Theo sprang out of his hiding place in the neighbor's rhododendron and tapped urgently on the window.

“Charles, what
is
it?” Nettie asked, leaning out.

“I have no time. It's urgent. I need the ruler. I have to borrow it for a little while.”

She frowned. “You've discovered something. Tell me.”

“It's only a theory. But I need to try it out.”

“What theory?”

“Can I please just have it? I don't have time to argue.”

Nettie scowled. “Fine. But the minute you test the theory, you have to tell me what it is.” She went to the piano bench and opened it. “Here,” she said, handing him the ruler through the window.

“Thanks, Nettie.” Theo flashed her a broad grin. “You're the best.”

“The minute you test it,” she said, eyes narrowed.

• • •

T
HEO
BURST
INTO
the kitchen of 34 East Ending Street.

“Fates above, Theo,” Mrs. Clay exclaimed. “What has happened?”

“What do you know about memory maps made of wood?”

She clearly had not expected this question. “Made of wood?”

“Did you ever see any at the Nochtland academy?”

Mrs. Clay blinked. “Yes, I suppose the students worked with wood on occasion. Wood as opposed to paper, you mean.”

“Yes, wood—a hard surface. What I want to know is how to wake a wooden map.”

Mrs. Clay sat down at the table. “How to wake a wooden map,” she echoed. “Let me think.” She closed her eyes.

Theo stood by, trying to calm his breathing.

“I'm trying to picture what they would do.” She opened her eyes briefly. “You have to understand, I never took part in any of the classes.”

“I know,” he said impatiently. “Anything you can remember.”

She closed her eyes again. “It isn't water or light . . . Why can't I remember? Oh!” she exclaimed, opening her eyes. She gave a smile of triumph. “Smoke.”

“Of course!” Theo said. “Smoke.” He dashed around the kitchen, collecting a pot, a scrap of brown grocery paper, and a box of matches. He lit the match and held it to the paper until it caught fire. Dropping it into the pot, he held the ruler over it until the smoke had coated every surface. Then he took it away. The ruler looked almost unchanged, but a slender red line had appeared on the unruled side, beside the date. Theo smiled. “I knew it,” he said. “This ruler is a memory map.”

Mrs. Clay was still perplexed. “A memory map of what?”

“I think it has the memories of the Weatherers who came to Boston. This ruler is going to tell us what happened to them.”

 34 

Seven Wings

S
OPHIA
HAD
NO
notion of time passing. She was not entirely sure of where she was, either. So completely had she submerged herself in the memories of the beaded map, she felt as though she had lived a year in Alvar Cabeza de Cabra's skin. She had seen the parched, harsh world as he saw it, grieved its losses as he grieved them, felt the feeble thread of hope given to him as he had felt it. Somewhere, like a distant echo, she felt these things as Sophia, too: the bitterness of an unknown world that would not yield its answers; the loss of her parents; the pain of knowing what had happened to them; and, with that knowledge, the frail hope of believing they might be alive. Her mind
wandered as freely over her own life as it had traveled through the map, grieving and hoping and grieving again, so that when she returned to the room at the inn in the Papal States, she felt that she had been away a lifetime.

She had changed during that lifetime. It was not just the knowledge of what had happened to her parents and the grief of seeing its cause unfold before her eyes. It was something else. Perhaps she had stayed too long with Cabeza de Cabra's memories, or perhaps the thoughts and feelings of Murtea's sheriff were so strong that they had marked her like a brand. Cabeza de Cabra was a man who had lost his faith and sought it. Sophia, emerging from the map, knew that her faith was gone also.

There was no greater meaning to her parents' loss, and there was no guiding hand that would take her to them. What had happened to them was cruel and senseless. Other people had stood by while they suffered. Sophia knew, as entirely and thoroughly as if she had always known it but wished not to: there were no Fates.

No one was leading her anywhere. She was following only herself.

Errol was asleep in his hammock, and Sophia realized she had been brought to awareness by Goldenrod's appearance in the doorway. She was staring at Sophia, her eyes sharp with concern. “What has happened?”

By way of answer, Sophia climbed out of her hammock and held up the beaded map.

“That is an Elodean map,” Goldenrod said softly.

Errol stirred and woke, lifting himself from the hammock.

“Yes. They contain one man's memories of a place not far from here.” Sophia's own voice sounded strange to her—hoarse and dry. She realized she must have wept at some point without knowing it. “His name is Alvar Cabeza de Cabra, a man from the Papal States who traveled from here to the Eerie Sea in search of his lost faith. He was the sheriff of a town named Murtea. It was the village my parents traveled to when I was little, in search of their friend. This map tells what happened to them.”

Errol materialized next to them, his eyes alert. Goldenrod studied Sophia keenly. “Show me,” she said.

Sophia spread the map out over the table at the center of the room. “It is one year, which is not marked but must be 1880 and part of 1881. It begins in April. Look at April twentieth at eleven-hour, then December ninth, January eleventh, and March seventeenth—all of them at dawn.”

Errol looked confused, but Goldenrod placed her fingers upon the map without a word. She was quiet, her brow furrowed with concentration.

“What is she doing?” Errol whispered to Sophia with frustration.

Having placed the map in Goldenrod's hands, Sophia felt suddenly exhausted, as if all the time she had spent within its boundaries had suddenly caught up to her. “Reading. She will show you how when she is done. I need to rest.” She stumbled
back to her hammock and crawled into it awkwardly. Before she had lifted her feet up after her, she was asleep.

—July 2: 5-Hour 10—

S
OPHIA
W
OKE
,
DISORIENTED
,
to find the room dark and empty. She was unsure of the day or time. Then she remembered the map and all that she had discovered within it, and she felt her body tighten with pain. She got out of the hammock, as if still in a dream, laced up her worn leather boots, and went to find her travel companions.

They were sitting in the candlelit dining room of the inn, speaking quietly to one another at a table while the innkeeper huddled by the fire, wrapped in a woolen shawl as if she were warding off bitter cold. Errol and Goldenrod looked up as one when Sophia entered. She could see at once that something had changed between them.

Sophia reached into her pocket and looked at her watch; it was just after five-hour; she had slept almost until dawn. It felt as though she had been sleeping for days.

Something had happened during the night, and now the falconer and the Eerie had a common purpose. They looked at her with shared knowledge, having come to an agreement. Both pale and serious, their faces had a surprising harmony, even with their contrasting features: Errol's eyes blue and sharp in his angular face, Goldenrod's dark and pensive under her calm brow.

“Did you sleep well?” Goldenrod asked.

Sophia nodded. “Yes, thank you.”

“We have read the map.” The Eerie's expression turned somber. “We understand what happened to your parents.”

Sophia looked at them each in turn, unblinking. “They have almost certainly become Lachrima.”

“Yes.” Goldenrod said matter-of-factly. She glanced at Errol. “That term is not known here, but I am familiar with it from the Baldlands.”

“If we understand correctly,” he said, “this man may have followed your parents to the Eerie Sea.”

“He did,” Sophia replied. “That is where my friends found the map. The man who wrote these memories was already dead. He followed the directions given to him in Ausentinia. And that must mean he followed them—the Lachrima, my parents—all the way there.”

“The distance they traveled is a long one,” Goldenrod said. “A very long one. You may know that the Wailings—the Lachrima, as you call them—sometimes fade, so that they are less body and more voice.”

“Yes, I have heard that,” Sophia replied dully.

“This fading happens as they travel. The farther they drift from the Age in which they were made faceless, the less corporeal their presence.”

Sophia slumped. “Then it is even worse than I had imagined.”

“Perhaps,” Goldenrod said. “But perhaps not.” She hesitated. “I do not wish to give you false hope.”

She turned to Errol, who nodded slightly. “Better to tell her everything, good and bad.”

Goldenrod reached out to Sophia. “Come sit beside us,” she said. Sophia wearily obliged, sinking onto a wooden stool. Goldenrod pressed her hand, a gesture of encouragement. “There are some among us, among the Elodeans, who are truly marvelous healers in the manner all Eerie are imagined to be. We call them Weatherers. They are seers, visionaries, great interpreters. There are four such among us now, though three are missing. It was these three healers I sought in Boston. You can imagine the need we have for them. They heal every manner of ailment, great and small. And they can heal the Wailings—they can restore their features and their minds.”

Sophia looked at her with a stirring of hope. Her mind flew to a distant place: to a dungeon in Nochtland, the capital of the Baldlands, where a veiled woman had spoken to her and issued threats. Blanca, who remembered who she was and found only pain in the memories; Blanca, who was a Lachrima but had recovered her past.
Of course they can be healed,
Sophia realized.
If one man can do it by accident, why should it not be possible on purpose?
“How? How do they heal them?”

Goldenrod shook her head. “I am not a Weatherer. I can only explain what they have related to us, of searching through lifetimes of memory to find the memories of the Wailing before them. But it is possible.”

“You have seen them do it?”

“I have. Three times in my life I have seen it done.”

“And they are entirely healed?”

“If they are corporeal, yes.”

Sophia's hope subsided. “But Lachrima who have traveled
far will fade.” She sighed. “Then it makes no difference.”

“We do not know. It may or may not have happened to your parents on their long journey. If it has not, then we can seek a Weatherer's aid.”

Errol chimed in. “What is your wish, Sophia? Is it your intention to go seek them in this region, near the Eerie Sea?”

Sophia swallowed. She looked away, at the innkeeper, who was staring into the fire as if contemplating a vision. A sound in the room brought the old woman's attention back to the present, and she stood slowly, unbending each limb. With shuffling steps, she left the room. Sophia shivered. “I still wish to see the diary. Those may be my mother's last words. I want to read them now more than ever. But I have decided that I will go to Ausentinia first. I will ask them for a map.”

Errol and Goldenrod shared a look.

“But it seems this place, Ausentinia, is gone,” Errol objected gently.

Sophia shook her head. “Not gone. Perhaps its borders are shifting. Perhaps the Dark Age holds it captive. But I don't believe it is gone.”

Goldenrod regarded her thoughtfully, then gave Errol a significant look. He had been about to speak, but with a knowing look he closed his lips. “Very well,” she said.

“We will accompany you east, to this town called Murtea, and help however we can,” added Errol.

“I doubt Murtea exists,” Sophia told them. “Some months after my parents disappeared, my uncle asked many of his friends—explorers—to visit the Papal States in search of them.
Nothing was ever found. Then, when we received a letter from my father last December, a letter he sent ten years ago that mentioned Ausentinia and the lost signs, my uncle Shadrack sent word to everyone he knew. No one had heard of either.

“I have studied the same maps he studied—in fact, I have them with me here—and they do show Murtea. But the maps are old. They are the same ones he used to help plan my parents' expedition. I think the Dark Age, after surrounding Ausentinia, moved farther outward, taking Murtea with it. Anyone who knew Murtea is gone. And who knows what the place is like now.”

There was a strange light in Goldenrod's eyes. “I would not be surprised if you are right,” she said softly. “We will go with you nonetheless. If we cannot find Murtea, perhaps we can find Ausentinia. And if not Ausentinia, then we will continue to Granada for the diary.” She suddenly became alert. “Someone is riding this way at great speed. Not the Golden Cross. A rider who comes alone. She comes to our aid.” She frowned. “But why—”

A rapid shuffling of feet sounded in the doorway. The old innkeeper shouted something at Errol and then rushed away. “Fourwings,” Errol said quickly. He took up his bow and quiver and hurried to the doorway. “Come,” he called over his shoulder. “We must not remain inside. They will cave in the roof and scavenge. It is what they do.”

“But my things—” Sophia started.

“Leave your things, miting, if you value your life.” He pulled her through the doorway and into the pale morning.

In the charcoal light of dawn, two winged creatures swooped and whirled overhead. They seemed small, like bats. They cried out, their voices coarse and metallic, like the sound of a knife scraping a grater. Galloping hoofbeats cut into the silence left in their wake, and Sophia saw a pale horse approaching from the east.

“That is the horse and rider,” Goldenrod replied to the unasked question. “She means us no harm.”

“Stay out in the open,” Errol ordered. “It will be safest.”