The Crimson Skew

by S. E. Grove

  “Because of the war?” Smokey asked.

  “Yes. No doubt. And because of the ash.”

  Casanova leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. He held one of Smokey’s cups in his hand, and he swirled the liquid in it slowly, as if pondering its contents. “You will have heard everyone call me a coward,” he said to Theo.

  “Once,” Theo acknowledged. “After that, no one said it in front of me.”

  “Thank you, but there was no need for you to defend me. There is no doubt that I am a coward. I have always been.”

  Theo waited for Smokey to contradict him, but she only watched Casanova with a closed expression, as if braced for pain.

  “I was born west of here,” Casanova began, “in a village near the border. When I was seven, my parents and my brother were killed by settlers from New Occident. I only survived because they thought I was dead. The blood of my little brother, which covered my head and shoulders, protected me. Passing over us like vultures, the settlers did not notice my breathing. They saw only two bloody boys, lying still in the dirt.”

  Theo stared at Casanova. He felt the food turning in his stomach.

  “The few of us who lived were taken in by another village, and I grew up among them. It was one of the warring villages. Over decades—centuries, most likely—they nurtured an enmity with another people on the shores of the Eerie Sea. Sometimes the villages made war on each other every few months. And sometimes there would be peace for years at a time—perhaps a decade, when we were lucky. I grew to manhood during one of these periods of peace. The village did well. When I was old enough, I married and had a child. Though I was always an outsider because I had been adopted into the village, I began to feel that my place was there, among them.

  “And then the peace we had was broken. It was unclear how. But the warring began again, and I refused to take part. No one could believe my refusal. Every grown man—every boy, even—was eager to prove his valor, his loyalty to the village. They called me a coward.” Casanova threw the contents of the cup onto the fire, and it flared angrily. “Of course, they were right. But I had seen my family killed by settlers, and I had no grudge against the people with whom we warred. When I imagined going with them, my thoughts conjured a vision of what would surely happen in the end: I saw myself hovering like a vulture over the body of some bloodstained boy, just as someone had stood over me. I much preferred to be a coward.

  “Then the man who led us—everyone called him Four-fingers, for as a child he had lost one finger to a dog bite—Four-fingers said that if I did not fight, then my family would be exiled. Set to drift, alone, without anyone to offer aid in the hard winters.” He shook his head slowly. “I should have said, ‘Yes, give us exile.’ But I did not.

  “My wife, Talise, had been raised in the village. Her entire family was there. I could not ask her to leave them forever, and to wander with me and Ossa—only four years old—in search of a new place. Where would we go? How would we eat? We could not take up with the settlers to the east; they would kill us. And all the people near the Eerie Sea would know the reason for our exile. They would not take us in: a coward and his family.

  “So I went. It was a night in April—clear, moonless. We approached the village silently—forty-six of us, all as quiet as snow in late spring. Four-fingers gave the sign, and we sent arrows into the village as a first warning. Then their men came out to meet us. I could not see the battlefield. My vision was filled with a red mist that I thought at the time was blood. But it was not blood. It was a memory.

  “My mind flew back to the past. Instead of seeing the place around me, I saw myself in the bright sunlight fifteen years earlier. I felt the earth shake under the horses’ hooves. The house was only a short run away. I saw my brother taking uncertain steps backward, and I reached out for him, too late. The horse charged past, and my brother, broken in half, soared toward me like a crushed bird. I felt his weight upon me, and I went still.

  “I struggled to plant myself in the present: in the dark April night, in the battle that surrounded us. And then, as clearly as if she had been standing beside me, I heard my daughter, Ossa, call out for me.

  “Now all visions of the past vanished. I saw where I was. I heard Ossa’s cry, repeated—she was calling out in pain. Without even considering how it was possible, knowing she was more than three miles away, I knew that her cry was real. I fled from the battle. I ran as fast as I could. Believe me . . .” Casanova paused. He swallowed. “I used every fragment of strength in my body. But still, I arrived too late. I could smell the burning wood from half a mile away. At that point, my daughter’s cries faded. I could no longer hear them.

  “When I arrived, the long house was charred black. The door had been barred from the outside. I lifted the bar, and the people who were yet alive spilled forth. I went in and carried out those who lay on the dirt floor, felled by the smoke. Still I did not see them—Talise and Ossa. At last I found them—toward the back, surrounded by flames. My wife held Ossa in her arms, wrapped around her as if her body would somehow stop the fire.

  “But it did not. I carried them out of the long house and extinguished the flames. They were already gone. They held one another so tightly, even in death, that I could not pry them apart. We had to bury them together.”

  Casanova turned his face so that the scars were visible. He smiled grimly, the scar twisting with the effort. “Afterward, they called me a coward for having left the battle.”

  “You saved more than thirty people in the long house, Grant,” Smokey said quietly.

  “Yes.” Casanova looked back at the fire. “But you and I do not reckon lives the way warriors do. It is another method of calculation that I do not understand. To them, the loss of so many people was only greater reason to make war again. And again.

  “We learned that the long house had been burned by settlers. Allied with our enemies. Making use of our absence. With all of the grown men gone, it was easy enough to herd the women, children, and old people into the long house. Terribly easy.”

  He took a small stone and dropped it into the fire. “I was glad to leave them, then. Glad to be exiled. I would have gone anywhere, but I knew of Oakring. Everyone knows it as a place of tolerance. A place that takes in exiles. So I came here.”

  “Grant does not mention that half his body suffered from burns,” Smokey said. “It is a wonder he made it here at all. The recovery was slow—many months.”

  “But in anyone else’s hands I would have died.” He looked at her solemnly. “And I would have welcomed it, then. Perhaps I chose too skillful a healer.”

  “I’m sorry,” Theo finally said. He was ashamed now of having prodded Casanova so many times, of having made his friend unearth a thing of such pain. “This war must seem disgusting to you,” he added.

  “It seems pointless,” Casanova replied. “Mindless. Destructive without reason.”

  Theo felt a sudden chill. He shivered. Casanova, he realized, had always planned to desert Major Merret’s company. The only question was when.

  22

  Datura

  —1892, August 9: 6-Hour 11—

  I have heard some of the Elodeans (Eerie) call it cloud-reading. It is more an art than a science, as far as I can tell. Looking at a cloud formation for a length of time—several seconds at least, though several minutes yields more—one can see in the pattern, shape, and texture traces of where the clouds have been.

  —From Sophia Tims’s Reflections on a Journey to the Eerie Sea

  AS THE TRAVELER from Boston and the Elodean from the shores of the Eerie Sea rode northwest out of Salt Lick, thousands of men to the south and east of them continued their slow swarm westward, to the Indian Territories.

  In some places, they collided with enemies from the Territories, leaving a trail of human debris along the path and at its edges—coiled around the trunk of a tree, submerged
in a creek, clutching the side of a boulder that had offered no defense. But in most places there was slow, steady movement: a tramping of boots marching north out of Kentucky behind New Occident’s General Griggs; a similar tramping of boots north and west out of Virginia behind General June. From the west, trickling south toward where the Territories met New Occident, smaller clumps of men journeyed by day and night; lone messengers ran and rode between them, drawing them toward a single purpose, toward a single place.

  A map of their movements would have shown Sophia that she was joining them: that carried along by Nosh’s steady pace, she was following another path to the same point. But there was no such map that she could see, and the suspense in the air around her—the trees listening to the rumbling of distant footsteps, the winds carrying the scent of so many human currents—seemed not like suspense but like ordinary silence.

  Even if such a map had existed, Sophia would have been too distracted to read it. Nosh ambled along at a moderate pace, and Bittersweet murmured a few words to him now and then—one half of an inexplicable conversation. Sophia was only half-aware of the path before them. Usually, in moments of shock, she felt the time around her slow down: it gave her space to think about what was happening and to find her place in it. Not this time. The onset of the red fog, the strange visions in the station, the terror of hiding and waiting, the appearance of Bittersweet and Nosh—she could not figure out how to begin making sense of it. She could not even figure out the right questions to ask. The images sat in her head like fragments that had nothing to do with one another.

  Then, finally, she found a piece that made sense. The words of the Ausentinian map, so engraved in her mind that she could not believe they had only occurred to her now: In the City of Stolen Senses, you will lose your companions. Remember that though in your brief life you have met Grief, confronting it alone, you have not yet met Fear. It dwells in the west, a companion on every path, a presence in every doorway. You will meet the wanderer who is sweet and bitter, and you will travel together, your fates bound on each step of the journey.

  “It finally happened,” she said aloud, her voice hushed with wonder. “Just as the map said.”

  “What happened? What map?” Bittersweet asked behind her.

  “I have a map that foretold this. That said I would lose my companions. I thought somehow we could avoid it. But we didn’t.”

  “You cannot avoid the crimson fog once it appears. To survive is difficult enough.”

  “What is it?” Sophia tried to turn to see his face. “You said it was a flower. How can that possibly be?”

  Bittersweet gave a slow sigh. “Can we stop for a little while, Nosh?”

  In response, the moose slowed his steps. He made his way off the path to a cluster of apple trees and slowly sank to the ground. The moment Sophia and Bittersweet climbed off, he began eating the fallen apples with a look of supreme contentment. Bittersweet sat next to him, reclining against Nosh’s side.

  Sophia propped herself against the trunk of the nearest tree. She took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of apples and grass and damp dirt. It cleared her head. Salt Lick was not yet lost from sight, but the countryside around them seemed peaceful, as if the crimson fog had never struck. The road they were on led northeast, and all around she could see fields of corn and clover.

  “How much did Goldenrod tell you about me?” Bittersweet asked.

  Sophia opened her satchel and removed the wheel of wood and the piece of antler. “I was given these,” she said. “And the antler had memories of you.”

  Nosh looked up and Bittersweet took hold of the two items with interest. “I see. Then you know how to read them?”

  “Only a little. I was learning from Goldenrod. When I told her what I had seen—your house in the woods and the moose—she said that it must be you. Then she said that it was your family she had gone to find in Boston.”

  “She did not find them,” Bittersweet said, “as I learned far too late. But I don’t know what happened to her beyond that.”

  “She never had a chance, for she was attacked when she arrived. Then she was asleep for months. And then . . .” Sophia took another deep breath. “It’s a long story. We’ve been across the ocean and only returned to New Occident a few days ago.”

  Bittersweet nodded as if this was not at all surprising. “It has been a long and fruitless search. No one has found them. Though I have come close once or twice.” He put his head back against Nosh’s side. “My sister, Datura. My mother, Solandra, and my grandfather, Lycium. They vanished traveling east last winter, and no one has had word of them since. This is strange, since it is usually possible for us to hear news of one another at long distances.”

  Sophia nodded. “Goldenrod has told me of the Climes.”

  “Ah,” Bittersweet said. This did surprise him. He considered Sophia in silence for a moment. “And did she notice that ours no longer speaks?”

  “Yes—she noticed when we left New Orleans. What does it mean?”

  “It has been this way for some time. And I do not know what it means. Though I have suspicions. The Clime has been out of balance—in the last month, it has been much worse. The debris clouds . . .”

  “Debris clouds?”

  “The heavy yellow clouds that rain ash and other debris.”

  Sophia nodded. “We saw the clouds—they are everywhere in New Occident. People call them ‘the Anvil.’ And then we saw falling ash on the train to Salt Lick. But no debris.”

  Bittersweet sat up and leaned forward, encircling his bent legs with his arms. His pants were worn through at the knees, Sophia noticed, and his shoes had been mended more than once. His black hair was cut so short that she could see a birthmark in the shape of a loose question mark over his right ear. Bittersweet pressed the green fingers of his right hand into the palm of his left. “You have seen Goldenrod’s gift?”

  “You mean the flowers that come out of her hands?”

  Bittersweet smiled, as if amused by the clumsiness of her description. “Yes—that. Mine is a vine, as you saw in Salt Lick. My sister, Datura, has a gift of red flowers shaped like fluted trumpets. At the base they are pale—almost white. Then they darken until they reach a brilliant crimson at the mouth. They are very beautiful.” Bittersweet’s hands tightened their grip on each other. “And very poisonous. They can be fatal if ingested, but even their scent affects the brain. It causes delirium, so that one cannot tell fantasy from reality.”

  Sophia caught her breath. “The crimson fog.”

  Bittersweet stared at his clasped hands and frowned. “But my sister learned very young—from the time she could walk, practically—to keep the flowers from causing harm. I know she caused the crimson fog, and I also know that she would only do something like this if she were compelled.” He had spoken matter-of-factly, and Sophia was surprised to see tears suddenly fill his eyes. “I dread to think of what has been used to force her hand. She must be terrified,” he said quietly.

  “Nosh and I have been following the fog,” he continued. “It has been appearing all this last month—the very length of time that the Clime has been out of balance. Almost always, we arrive too late. Sometimes, like today, we arrive soon after the fog begins, and I search for her. Salt Lick is a larger city than most, and I knew from the start it would be almost impossible. And besides, Nosh had it in his head to find you.” He reached out absently and patted the moose’s vast head. “Nosh always knows best,” he said, a little regretfully.

  Sophia watched him. The fog caused pain and terror in many ways, but for Bittersweet it caused a different kind of anguish. She remembered what Goldenrod told her in the Papal States about the power of the Eerie, and how there were some who would use such power for evil ends. This is what she meant, Sophia thought, with dawning horror.

  “The fog is greatly damaging to people, but to plant life it is nourishing,” continued B
ittersweet. “You saw how the bittersweet vines grew so quickly.”

  Sophia considered this. “If the fog helped your vines to grow, would it do the same for Goldenrod’s flowers?”

  “Almost certainly. Goldenrod is not immune to the effect of Datura’s vapors, but her gift will be greatly enhanced by them all the same.”

  Sophia knew from the Ausentinian map that her path led onward, alongside Bittersweet. Yet now that her head had fully cleared, and she understood that the fog came from the hands of a terrified girl, she felt the impulse to return to Salt Lick.

  “You are thinking about going back to look for Goldenrod,” Bittersweet said, observing her thoughtfully.

  “I am,” Sophia said, startled.

  Bittersweet smiled. “I cannot read minds. You were wearing the thought on your face.”

  “Oh. Yes. I don’t like the feeling of going off without knowing what happened to my friends.”

  Bittersweet frowned. “The old one no longer speaks to me, but Nosh can still read its thoughts, much as I just read yours. What Nosh tells me is that Goldenrod and the others are safe.”

  “Then we should go back and try to find them.” She stood up and walked out from the shelter of the apple tree. Salt Lick was still visible in the distance: a dark cluster of buildings on the plain. Above, the sky was cloudy, but without the oppressiveness of the previous days. Ordinary white clouds, thin and broken, trailed one another slowly. She looked at the city, wondering what was happening in Salt Lick Station. Had the agents of the League fled? Had they taken all her friends captive? What if they had all scattered and now were unable to find one another?

  A dark speck in the sky made her heart stop, and a panicked thought flashed through her mind: Dragon. She shook her head as if to dislodge the thought. There is no dragon, she told herself. The speck grew larger. It was flying fast and straight at her. Sophia looked up with new attention. The soaring shape came into view as it dove toward her.