by S. E. Grove
BOOKS BY S. E. GROVE
MAPMAKERS
The Glass Sentence
The Golden Specific
The Crimson Skew
VIKING
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2016
Copyright © 2016 by S. E. Grove
Maps by Dave A. Stevenson
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE
EBOOK ISBN 9780698148383
Version_1
For Rowan
At that time I had three children who went with me on foot, one who rode on horse back, and one whom I carried on my back.
Our corn was good that year; a part of which we had gathered and secured for winter.
In one or two days after the skirmish at Connissius lake, Sullivan and his army arrived at Genesee river, where they destroyed every article of the food kind that they could lay their hands on. A part of the corn they burnt, and threw the remainder in the river. They burnt our houses, killed what few cattle and horses they could find, destroyed our fruit trees, and left nothing but the bare soil and timber. But the Indians had eloped and were not to be found.
Having crossed and recrossed the river, and finished the work of destruction, the army marched off to the east. Our Indians saw them move off, but suspecting that it was Sullivan’s intention to watch our return, and then to take us by surprize, resolved that the main body of our tribe should hunt where we then were, till Sullivan had gone so far that there would be no danger of his returning to molest us.
This being agreed to, we hunted continually till the Indians concluded that there could be no risk in our once more taking possession of our lands. Accordingly we all returned; but what were our feelings when we found that there was not a mouthful of any kind of sustenance left, not even enough to keep a child one day from perishing without hunger.
The weather by this time had become cold and stormy; and as we were destitute of houses and food too, I immediately resolved to take my children and look out for myself, without delay.
—Dehgewärnis (Mary Jemison of the Seneca), 1779
CONTENTS
BOOKS BY S. E. GROVE
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
AT THAT TIME . . .
ILLUSTRATIONS
Plate I: Map of the New and Unknown World
Plate II: New Occident and Its Adjoining Ages
Plate III: The Eerie Sea and Its Environs
From Shadrack Elli
Prologue
PART I: CLOUDS
1: Hispaniola
2: Pulio’s Perfumery
3: The Armor
4: Five Letters
5: Maxine’s Dovecote
6: Morel and Violets
7: The Lesson
8: Bark and Bone
9: Wren’s Voice
10: The Reprisal
PART II: FOG
11: Seneca’s Ear
12: Tree-Eater
13: Two Pigeon Posts
14: The Yoke
15: The Coward
16: Salt Lick Station
17: Nosh’s Eye
18: The Backwoods
19: Three Hints
20: Bittersweet
PART III: RAIN
21: The Long House
22: Datura
23: Weathering
24: One Hundred Crates
25: Lichen’s Quarry
26: Wailing Grove
27: Oakring
28: Pip’s Delivery
29: The Exiles
30: Four Pawns
PART IV: STORM
31: Half a Lie
32: Smoke Maps
33: Oarless
34: The Island
35: Birke’s Voyage
36: Seven Witnesses
37: The Iron Cage
38: One Terrier
39: Red Garnets
40: Red Woods
41: Reunion
42: The Terms
Epilogue: New Maps
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
You will understand that our priority was to prevent the advance of the Glacine Age and save our own skins—I could not indulge my inquisitive nature as I usually do. So what did we learn? We knew that Blanca, the Lachrima who had held me captive, relied upon Nihilismian recruits to do her work. We knew that Blanca altered their minds and took many of their memories with the hourglass device, a horror I had seen at work firsthand. We knew that the Sandmen, as she called them, were loyal to her, and I suspected that they were drawn to her in the first place because they perceived in her grand vision for the world a way to return to the Age of Verity. They imagined, as she did, that the consequences of the Great Disruption could somehow be reversed. But our questions outnumbered and still outnumber our answers. How did she find and recruit Sandmen? What Ages did they come from? And, most vitally, what would they do now that Blanca was gone? Would they retreat and disappear from sight? Or would they reemerge to pursue some greater, perhaps even more terrible purpose?
—From Shadrack Elli’s private reports to Prime Minister Cyril Bligh
Prologue
July 23, 1892
Dear Shadrack,
The foul weather in the Territories has continued. The heavy clouds, motionless and low, seem now to be a permanent fixture. I cannot remember when we last saw the sun. But now things have taken a turn for the worse. Something has happened this day that I have never seen before and that cannot be explained. I scarcely trust myself to describe it. Let me tell you how it happened.
I awoke in the middle of the night to a commotion at my door. A woman I know from the nearby town of Pear Tree stood there. Esther had a look about her that I have seen only once before, on the face of a man who fled and outran a forest fire: grief, disbelief, and confusion swirled in her eyes. She seemed unsure of whether she was among the living or the dead. “Casper?” she whispered. “Is it you?”
I told her it was. I did not understand the tale she related to me, and it had to be repeated many times. Even when I finally understood her words, I still could not make sense of them.
She said it had started in the evening, a while still before sunset, for there was yet light enough to see. She had been taking the children’s clothing down from the drying line when she saw a red vapor spilling over the stone wall of her garden. Wondering what it was, she watched the strange substance approach until it rose and swelled, immersing her and the clothesline, obscuring even her house from view. For a time she stood, waiting anxiously. She realized the vapor smelled sweet, like a flower. Then the smell changed. It grew foul—like rotting meat.
She heard a distant scream, and the sound filled her with panic. Fighting through the fog, she burst into the house. She found the crimson vapor clogging every room an
d passageway, and the panic rose to terror. Calling for her children, she made her way through the house half-blind. Then she saw the intruders: three giant rats as large as full-grown men, their black eyes cruel, their yellowed teeth sharp. Seizing a knife from the kitchen, she chased them through the house, fearing what they would do or had done to her children. The rats closeted themselves in the pantry and hissed at her through the door.
She could not find her children anywhere.
She called for them with growing desperation, finally stumbling outside. Then she realized that her own cries were being echoed by others everywhere, in every house of Pear Tree. The entire town blazed with panic. Something tugged at her mind, some uncertainty, but she could not place it. She knew only that something was not right.
It is the fog, she finally realized. I am confused, and it began with the fog.
She found her way along the road, though the sounds on either side were terrifying. When she finally made her way out of Pear Tree, darkness had fallen. She could tell that she had left the fog behind, because her mind began to clear. Looking back upon the town, she could see nothing in the settled darkness, but she heard ceaseless screams and shouts. The impulse to turn back and seek her children warred with the impulse to seek help elsewhere. Uncertainly, still confused by what she had seen, she came here and woke me in the dead of night.
I assembled all the council and within the hour we were on the road to Pear Tree. We arrived just as the gray day was dawning, putrid and damp as every day has been all this month. The crimson fog had passed, but it had left its mark in more ways than one. A thin sediment of the purest red coated every surface: the stone wall surrounding Pear Tree, the leaves of every tree, the roof of every house, the surface of every path and road. As we made our way slowly into the silent town, we saw what else the fog had left behind: the human wreckage.
The first thing we saw was a man sitting on his front step, holding a woman’s laced boot. When we spoke to him, he ignored us entirely. I approached and asked if he was hurt. Finally he turned his eyes to me and held up the boot, saying, “Wolves don’t wear shoes.” He seemed stunned by his own statement. We could gain nothing more from him.
Some of the houses and barns had been burned with their occupants. The smell was unbearable. Many houses that stood intact had doors ominously ajar, and I caught glimpses of broken furniture, torn curtains, shattered windows.
I will not describe it further, Shadrack, for it is too horrible, but I believe in those few hours half the lives of Pear Tree were lost.
We returned to Esther’s home. She was shocked, of course—shocked into silence and shaking beside me as we walked. “There is something,” she said, her voice breaking, as we neared her house. “There is something I do not understand.”
“There is much that I do not understand,” I said.
“How,” she went on, as if I had not spoken, “how were the rats able to barricade the door to the pantry?”
I confess that I did not take her meaning. It seemed a pointless question in the midst of such a catastrophe. No doubt the truth had begun to dawn on her before I saw even the faintest glimmer of it. But when we reached her house I understood. Hurrying, anxious with her sudden doubt, she rushed in and made her way to the pantry door. She knocked upon it urgently. “Open the door,” she sobbed. “Open the door, I beg you.”
There was a scuffle, and we heard heavy things shifted aside one by one. The door opened a crack and Esther’s three children peered out at us, their eyes wide with fear.
It is a distortion, Shadrack, a skewed perception that changes the reality before you into something dreadful. The survivors who could assemble their thoughts described to us different visions—all terrifying. There were no intruders, no monsters. The fog caused the people of Pear Tree to turn upon themselves.
If this is done by human hand, it is the cruelest act I have yet to see. If it is done by nature, it is no less frightening. I ask you: What is this? Is it part and parcel of the weather that plagues us, or is it something unrelated? Has it happened only in Pear Tree, or elsewhere, too? Please—tell me what you know.
(This will be given to Entwhistle, as you asked. Instruct me if I should do otherwise in future.)
Yours,
Casper Bearing
1
Hispaniola
—1892, August 2: 7-Hour 20—
Though the United Indies makes a legal distinction between merchants and pirates, safeguarding the privileges of the one while prosecuting (on occasion) the crimes of the other, in practice they are almost indistinguishable. Both hold property in the Indies—sometimes lavish property. Both exert considerable influence on the Indies’ government. Both enjoy access to the seas and trade with foreign Ages. Indeed, it is, for the outsider, difficult to see where merchants end and pirates begin.
—From Shadrack Elli’s History of the New World
SOPHIA AWOKE TO the sound of a woman singing. The voice was low and languid and sweet, as if the singer had all the time in the world; it sang of mermaids and silvery stars and moonbeams shining on the sea. It took Sophia a moment to remember where she was: Calixta and Burton Morris’s estate on Hispaniola.
With a sigh of contentment, Sophia stretched against the soft sheets. She lay in bed with her eyes closed, listening to Calixta singing in the neighboring room as she brushed her hair and dressed. Suddenly the song was interrupted by a shout of dismay and a thump, as if from a booted foot striking a trunk. “Where are my tortoiseshell combs?” Calixta wailed.
Sophia opened her eyes and smiled. Splinters of light were pushing their way into the dark room. As the protests next door became fervent curses, she got out of bed and opened the tall wooden shutters, revealing a small balcony. The sunlight of Hispaniola was blinding. Sophia shielded her eyes until they adjusted, and then she caught her breath with delight at the sight before her: the grounds of the estate and, beyond the grounds, the shining ocean. Marble steps led down to a long lawn bordered by bougainvillea, jasmine, and birds-of-paradise. A straight path paved in white stone cut through the lawn to the beach. The Swan, anchored at the private dock, bobbed serenely on the sparkling waters.
“Sophia!” Calixta called. Sophia reluctantly made her way back into the bedroom, where Calixta stood holding what appeared to be a billowing curtain in a shocking shade of fuchsia. “Look what I found,” she declared triumphantly. “This will fit you perfectly!”
“What is it?” Sophia asked dubiously.
“Only the finest silk New Orleans has to offer,” Calixta exclaimed. “Try it on.”
“Now?”
“It’s midmorning, you lazy thing! We have plans to make and people to see, and I insist you be well dressed for it.”
“Very well,” Sophia replied agreeably. Of course Calixta already has plans made, she said to herself, and of course she already has outfits chosen for everyone as part of those plans. Sophia had found on the voyage from Seville, across the Atlantic, that it was almost always better to let the pirate captain have her way.
She slipped out of her nightgown and let Calixta help her into the silk dress, which was indeed beautiful. Sophia examined herself skeptically in the tall standing mirror beside the bed. “I look like a little girl impersonating the famous pirate Calixta Morris. And I can barely breathe.” She reached for the shoulder strap. “I’m taking it off.”
Calixta laughed. “No, you’re not! We’ll do your hair properly and get you stockings and shoes. A little powder and orange-flower water. That’s all.” She gave Sophia a quick kiss on the cheek. “And you’re not a little girl anymore, sweetheart.” She turned to the doorway. “Yes, Millie?”
A maid wearing a black-and-white uniform stood in the doorway. “Will you want breakfast here or downstairs, Captain Morris?”
“Have the others woken?”
“They are all downstairs, Captain, except for your b
rother.”
“Still snoring soundly, no doubt,” Calixta muttered. “We’ll join the others downstairs, Millie—thank you.”
Millie left the room with a brief nod.
“Let me just get my things,” Sophia said, moving to gather her satchel.
Calixta stopped her, taking her hand. “You’re safe here, Sophia,” she said. “Our home is yours, and you have nothing to fear. We won’t have to bolt at a moment’s notice. You can leave your things in your bedroom.”
Sophia pressed Calixta’s hand. “I know. Thank you. Let me find my watch.”
Damask curtains, gilded mirrors, and delicate furniture upholstered in cream and blue: Calixta’s hand lay behind the effortless luxury. Sophia’s pack, satchel, books, and clothes—gray and worn from two Atlantic crossings and a perilous journey through the Papal States—made a dirty pile that seemed to have no place in the sumptuous room. “Got it!” She tucked the watch into a hidden pocket of the fuchsia dress.
“Down we go, then,” Calixta said. Not to be outdone by the fuchsia, she was wearing a lemon-colored silk with gold trim. She trailed a hand along the polished banister as they descended the wide marble steps to the main floor.
Their travel companions were in the comfortable breakfast room. Sitting side by side on a white couch beside the windows, Errol Forsyth, a falconer from the Closed Empire, and Goldenrod, an Eerie from the edges of the Prehistoric Snows, looked out at the ocean with rather dazed expressions. Sophia thought to herself, not without amusement, that they seemed just as out of place in the gilded mansion as she felt in the fuchsia dress. Goldenrod sat stiffly, her pale-green hands folded in her lap, her long hair wild and windblown. She looked like a tuft of grass on a plate of porcelain. Errol, his clothes even more worn than Sophia’s, rubbed the scruff of his chin, pondering the view. Seneca, Errol’s falcon, blinked unhappily from his perch on the archer’s shoulder.
At least Richard Wren, the Australian sea captain, seemed at ease. He stood in a wide stance before the windows, happily munching a piece of toast as he took in the view.
