The Golden Specific

by S. E. Grove

  Sophia would not have recognized her calm, expressionless friend from the Nihilismian Archive. Though Remorse had not changed her appearance, an unrestrained vitality now animated her every word and gesture.

  She plunged her hands into her hair and held her head. “You know what this means.”

  “It doesn’t mean anything, Cassia,” Cornelius said soothingly.

  “I hate when this happens.”

  “Some coincidences are just coincidences.”

  “Sam!” Remorse sprang to her feet and crossed the room, toppling a low stack of books in the process. “You know better. A coincidence is never a coincidence. Coincidence is how pre-cephalon Ages explain what they don’t understand.”

  “I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some real ones,” Cornelius ventured. “Last week, I was looking for a book on dinosaurs, and I found one on parliament politicians from the 1820s.”

  “That’s not a coincidence, Sam, that’s a joke,” Remorse said dismissively. “And really kind of a bad one.”

  Cornelius sighed. “Okay. What are you going to do?”

  Remorse tapped her front teeth with her forefinger. “Nothing. We have to stick with the plan. We’ve already moved the container, and I have to get it to Seville. There’s no other way.” She took a deep breath and put her hands on her hips. “We shouldn’t have meddled this much. I’m afraid we’ve gone too far.”

  —11-Hour 55—

  THEO HAD HAPPILY distracted Mrs. Clay in the kitchen while Sophia came downstairs and left by the front door, carrying her bulky travel gear. He had spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon in half-pretended idleness, throwing himself repeatedly in the way of Mrs. Clay’s housekeeping until she announced, exasperated, that she was off to do the shopping. “I am happy to have you back, Theodore,” she said, “but you have such a talent for inconvenience.” Theo smiled to himself as he watched her leaving with her basket.

  He tossed the last few things into his pack, pulled the drawstring tight, and fastened the flap. Shouldering the pack, he bounded down the stairs to the first floor. He was congratulating himself on how smoothly his and Sophia’s plan had gone so far when he heard, to his surprise, Miles and Shadrack arguing at the side door. He pulled off the pack and thrust it under the kitchen table just as Shadrack came in.

  “I have already tried,” Shadrack said, scowling.

  “He must be somewhere,” Miles insisted.

  “Miles.” Shadrack turned to face him. “I beg you to say something useful. Telling me that ‘he must be somewhere’ helps me not at all.”

  Theo raised his eyebrows. Miles was prone to frequent displays of temper, but Shadrack was rarely as angry as he was now. It was disconcerting to see the old explorer relatively calm while Shadrack seethed. “Who is somewhere?” Theo asked.

  Shadrack glanced at him and began to pace. “The prime minister. I have had no word of him since yesterday morning. No one, in fact, has seen him.”

  Theo shrugged. “Maybe he needed a holiday?”

  “Bligh is not on holiday,” Shadrack snapped. “And he is not at home and he is not at the State House, and I begin to worry that something very serious has happened to him. He would never vanish in the middle—” Shadrack turned on his heel and headed for the library.

  “This has something to do with your conversation with Broadgirdle yesterday morning,” Miles accused him.

  Theo followed them, both his plans and his pack beneath the kitchen table temporarily forgotten.

  “Why is the door to the map room open?” Shadrack asked, pausing at the bookshelf. “Is Sophia here?” he asked Theo.

  “She’s out.”

  “It is really very offensive,” Miles said, beginning to look perturbed. “I take it that you told Bligh, but you will not tell me. What happened? Did Broadgirdle threaten you?”

  Shadrack held up his hand. “I am sorry, Miles, but I have told you I will not discuss it.”

  “Listen to me, Shadrack. It is not like you to be this obstinate, and while I am the first to admit that I often too readily take to argument, in this case you must see that the provocation is extreme. I demand,” he continued, raising his voice as he followed Shadrack down the stairs, “as probably your closest and certainly your oldest friend, I demand that you tell me this instant what happened during that conversation.” All of Miles’s huffing indignation was suddenly deflated as he reached the bottom of the stairs and collided directly with the back of his closest and oldest friend. Theo, a few steps above him, gave a small, involuntary gasp.

  They all stared at the horror that confronted them: Prime Minister Cyril Bligh sat in one of the chairs, his face frozen in surprise. His jacket was neatly hung on another chair. The black waistcoat he wore shone unnaturally, and the white shirt beneath it was stained dark with blood.

  Shadrack leaped forward, insensible of how the congealed blood on the carpet was staining his shoes and the blood on Bligh’s body was staining his hands. “Bligh,” he cried. “For Fates’ sake, Bligh, answer me!” He put his hands to the man’s neck for a pulse.

  Miles flew after him, seizing the prime minister’s wrist. “He is cold,” he said. “Completely cold.”

  Theo’s eyes darted around the room, taking it all in. On the table beside the prime minister lay a short knife. The blade was encrusted with blood. The mother-of-pearl handle was perfectly clean. Beside the knife were a blood-spattered heavy cotton robe and a pair of gloves. There were no footprints anywhere. The carpet on the stairs was clean.

  A deafening crash sounded above.

  Abruptly, Miles and Shadrack stopped their futile efforts to revive the prime minister. “Sophia!” Shadrack shouted, rushing toward the stairs, as the sound of pounding footsteps filled the house. Theo grabbed the bloody instruments from the table and made for the familiar wardrobe at the back of the room. In a matter of seconds, he was closeted within it.

  A phalanx of police officers rushed down the stairs, meeting Shadrack halfway with their pistols drawn. “Shadrack Elli and Miles Countryman,” the leading officer shouted, far louder than was necessary. “Put your hands over your heads. You are under arrest for conspiracy and treason, and for the murder of Prime Minister Cyril Bligh.”

  12

  Adrift

  —1892, June 4: 13-Hour 00—

  Scholars who have examined the Book of Amitto, the sacred text of the Nihilismians, have raised interesting questions about its authenticity. It is undeniable that the tone of the prose throughout is consistent and likely composed by a single author. But that author may not be, as Nihilismians maintain, from New Occident. Vocabulary and usage suggest other possible backgrounds. Therefore scholars very rightly ask: why would Amitto pretend to be from New Occident?

  —From Shadrack Elli’s History of New Occident

  BOSTON HARBOR WAS hectic with the cries of gulls and the shouts of mariners. Its distinctive smells—molasses and sugar, coffee and rum, ocean air and seaweed—drifted by like restless travelers disembarking from their long voyages. Sophia wove her way through the crowd to the harbormaster’s office, where she posted a letter to Calixta and Burr asking them to meet her and Theo in Seville in one month. She showed her papers to one of the officers who patrolled the harbor, ensuring that no foreigners entered and that any traveling citizens had the proper paperwork. Then, her pulse quickening, she searched for the Verity.

  She found the name in white paint on a ship with tall masts and a smooth hull. The figurehead, a woman in blue wearing a white blindfold, echoed the blindfolded gargoyle at the entrance of the Nihilismian Archive. The tightly furled sails seemed ready to spring open, anticipating an imminent journey.

  As she stood gazing at the ship, a middle-aged man in a trim blue uniform approached her. He carried a Nihilismian amulet around his neck and a notebook and pencil in his hands. “Are you sailing with the mission to the Papal State
s?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she replied with a shaky exhalation.

  “Your name?”

  “Every Tims.”

  He scanned the pages of his notebook. “Here you are. I remember now. Remorse arranged for your passage. And you are traveling with someone else? It says ‘Every Tims and her guest, Shadrack Elli.’”

  “The name Remorse gave you is incorrect. And he isn’t here yet.”

  “You may board and I will direct him when he arrives. What is the correct name?”

  “Theodore Constantine Thackary.”

  “Very well.” He gave a brief nod. “Welcome aboard the Verity, Miss Tims. Your cabin is number seven.”

  “Thank you.”

  Sophia climbed the gangplank. The moment she reached the top, she felt the waters of the harbor gently rocking the Verity, and the seasickness she had come to know so well the previous summer struck her with full force. She took a deep breath and steadied herself, then slowly followed the signs to the cabins. As she passed the open doors, she saw more than one Nihilismian unpacking: other missionaries, like Remorse, preparing for the long Atlantic crossing. With deliberate movements, they placed folded clothes in drawers, books onto shelves, bedding onto the mattresses. Sophia opened the door to cabin 7 and surveyed the tiny room. A bunk bed with netted curtains filled half the space. A wooden chair and a desk stood under the round window, its frame painted blue.

  Sophia put her pack on the floor and her satchel on the desk. She sat down and inhaled deeply, trying to calm her stomach. She reached into her pocket and clasped the spool of silver thread. I’m here, she said to herself. I’m here and this is going to be fine. Theo and I faced worse together last year. This will be easy. Through the open door, she could hear the seagulls and the waves splashing against the ship. There was no other sound. She watched the curtains on the bed ruffle gently in the breeze in smooth, unpredictable patterns.

  The seasickness troubled her less when she closed her eyes; she had been told that ordinary seasickness improved by fixing the eye upon a steady horizon, but she knew the malady that arose from being adrift in the timelessness of the ocean manifested differently. Closing her eyes, Sophia focused on a single point in time: the morning before, when Minna had appeared to her and spoken those simple words: Take the offered sail. She saw the figure’s hazy contours and heard the voice; she pictured the rest of her room in the dawn light; slowly, she began to feel herself settle and the seasickness abate. It was such a relief to feel well again that she kept herself in the moment for as long as she could.

  The sound of the waves beyond the open doorway changed. Sophia opened her eyes and realized at once that the light had shifted and yellowed. She scrambled for her watch but could not believe what it said: fifteen-hour, seven.

  With panicked steps, she flung herself from her cabin and out into the corridor, running until she reached the rail. The city of Boston was rapidly shrinking. The Verity had set sail. And as far as she knew, neither Theo nor Remorse was aboard.

  13

  The Malady

  February 25, 1881

  The Roost arrived in Seville the following day, as Captain Wren had predicted. The parting from Wren and his crew left us rather wistful, for the final twenty hours were the most enjoyable we spent aboard. Released from their self-imposed subterfuge, the Australians were able to behave as they really were—that is, loud, inquisitive, and riotously good-humored.

  Much of the afternoon was spent in eager interrogation of our history and habits; they were infinitely curious about the world of New Occident and the Baldlands, which most had never seen. We found them less forthcoming about their Age, and we quickly learned that if we were to keep them cheerful, we were not to ask questions. But the evening was enjoyable as well, and we went to bed far too late and woke to find we had nearly docked. For the last portion of our journey, Captain Wren slowed the ship to a less astonishing speed, so as not to draw attention.

  As we disembarked in Seville, Captain Wren made us a gift of a watch on a heavy chain. While at first glance it seemed ordinary, a watch that might be found in any Boston shop, on closer inspection it proved to have twelve hours on its face, rather than twenty. It was Australian in more ways than this, according to Captain Wren. “I’m really not supposed to give you anything,” he said, “but as I’ve bent the rules so far already, I figured I may as well bend them a little more.” He turned the watch over. “If you press here, you’ll see that the back flips open.” We watched as he revealed a compartment with three bronze buttons the size of pinheads. “Think of this watch as a kind of magnet,” Wren explained, to our surprise, “that draws me to you should you ever need assistance. The top button will activate the magnet, and I will be alerted. Should you be in serious danger, do not hesitate to press it. I’ll find a way to reach you.”

  “What do the others do?” Bronson asked.

  “You won’t need them; they won’t be useful while you’re in the Papal States—or New Occident, for that matter.”

  “Thank you, Captain Wren, for all your kindness,” I said, pressing his hand. “I hope we never have an emergency that requires calling you, but this watch will serve as a wonderful reminder of you and the days we spent aboard the Roost.”

  After we said our good-byes, Wren sailed almost immediately, without so much as restocking his ship. He had explained that there were more than enough provisions in the hold, and that they needed to make up for lost time. We were left, rather forlornly, by ourselves on the streets of Seville.

  The city is probably quite beautiful, though I am sure we did not enjoy it as we might have. The mood of the populace was withdrawn and uneasy. On the way to the city center, we were nearly robbed twice, and it is only thanks to Bronson’s long sword and my passable Castilian that we arrived safely in the Jewish quarter, where we knew of a map store and an inn friendly to foreign travelers. Our information proved correct, and the elderly innkeeper demonstrated himself to be the kindest man we met in all the Papal States. Hearing we had nearly been robbed, Gilberto Jerez shook his head of white hair with exaggerated grief and thanked the heavens for our safe delivery. He showed us to our small but very clean room and fed us excessively with a stew of chicken and chickpeas and a dessert of figs and almonds.

  Though Seville was, on the whole, as backward and primitive as is to be expected of such an early Age, I would have stayed in Gilberto’s little inn quite happily for an entire month.

  If only the Fates had allowed us some foresight, so that we might have done so.

  Instead, we explained the urgency of our mission to the kindly Gilberto, who insisted the following day on accompanying us personally to the home of his nephew, a reliable if taciturn man of roughly my years by the name of Ildefonso. Gilberto had suggested that Ildefonso, who was a merchant and often traveled the route east, might accompany us to Murtea. Ildefonso admitted that he had no plans to travel for another few weeks in that direction, but we were able to persuade him to serve as our guide by offering fair payment in gold. Shadrack had told us, and he was right, that the Papal States value gold above all else. It is well known that in the Spains and their empire—that is to say, in the place that existed in our Age, hundreds of years earlier—gold was also valued highly. But, as with so many things, the world was not the same after the Great Disruption; the Papal States are not the Spains. In the Papal States, gold is valued above all else for a different reason.

  The dreaded Dark Age, which sits on the road between Seville and Granada, is thought to be the source of a plague known as lapena. Bruno had warned us of it in his letter, and his warning proved correct: even in Seville, where the other dangers of the Dark Age are proximate, the plague is the most feared.

  The illness begins with a marked wave of exhaustion and lethargy. The victim’s spirits become very downcast, such that all the world seems dark and oppressive. It has been described by survivors as a gra
dual loss of vision, so that the victim’s world seems to shrink from the edges outward. As the days pass, the victim languishes more and more, turning away all food and drink, feeling nothing for loved ones, and, finally, caring nothing for his or her own life. I have seen people afflicted with lapena, and I can confirm that it is terrible to witness. Usually, the victim dies slowly of thirst or starvation, making the grief of the victim’s family all the more terrible. It seems a choice, though clearly it is not; it is a disease that the sufferer has no power to resist. And there is one other thing which I should have mentioned at the start: lapena is contagious. Terribly so.

  There is no proven cure, but for reasons that physicians do not fully understand, there is one substance that on occasion has been observed to have an ameliorating or preventative effect: gold. More often than not, it has no effect at all. But rumor has it that the precious metal has more than once prevented the disease from taking root or even kept a sufferer from death. Gilberto himself told us that he had seen a distant relative cured after she was forced to look at her face in a mirror of beaten gold. But people have attempted far more radical cures: wearing a golden breastplate like a shield; drinking water mixed with gold flakes; even piercing the body with gold needles. For this reason, gold is in high demand in the Papal States, and every ounce of it is gathered for the purpose of warding off lapena.

  In any case, we arrived well equipped. We had spent a small fortune in Boston changing currency for gold in preparation for the journey, and we considered the gold we gave Ildefonso well spent if it would carry us to our destination safely. Shadrack had also equipped us with the best possible maps: his own of the Papal States, a glass map from a friend who had journeyed to Toledo a decade earlier, and a tea map to find lodging.

  I will say little of our journey east to Murtea, because thanks to Ildefonso it was mostly uneventful. We had thought that our gold was buying only his services as a guide, but perhaps due to Gilberto’s urging, or perhaps due to a surprising generosity, he brought along two cousins for additional protection. Ostensibly, they were to defend us from the cuatroala or “fourwing,” a fearsome beast, with, as the name would suggest, four wings; it resides in the Dark Age and ventures from that black forest to pillage and scavenge for food. We did not encounter any fourwings, but the presence of the two cousins, whom we only knew by their nicknames—“Rubio” and “El Sapo”—effectively dissuaded any highway robber who might have been tempted to make our journey difficult. Rubio, a tall, thin man with curly blond locks, carried a long sword and a dagger and made a great show of cleaning his teeth with the short blade whenever we stopped for a meal. El Sapo, who was nearly as wide as he was tall, had lost most of his teeth in previous brawls, and his callused fists were like clubs. Thanks to them and Ildefonso’s vaguely menacing silence, everyone left us to ourselves.