The Glass Sentence (The Mapmakers Trilogy)

by S. E. Grove

  The Sandmen dragged him, struggling, across the chapel floor and back to the chair by the desk. “Bind his left arm tightly,” Blanca said quietly. “Hold his right arm but leave it free.” Shadrack’s shoulders ached as his chest was pinned back and his left hand tied. “And put the bonnet on him. Just the ribbon—I need his eyes open.”

  The man standing before him held a small block of wood the size of a bar of soap threaded through with a thin piece of wire. Shadrack clenched his teeth and tucked his chin against his chest. The man standing behind him yanked his head back and hit his windpipe, just hard enough so that Shadrack was forced to cough. Before he could close his mouth, he felt the wooden block between his teeth and the thin wires against his cheeks. Then they were wound together tightly behind his head.

  The wire began biting into the corners of his mouth. He knew now how the Nihilismians earned their scars.

  “If you don’t fight it, the wire won’t cut you,” Blanca said sweetly. “You are going to write a letter for me.” She set paper and pen before him and leaned in. “Now.”

  Shadrack took the pen unsteadily. Blanca had drawn back, but not soon enough; he had seen the face beneath her veil.

  11

  On the Tracks

  1891, June 22: 11-Hour 36

  The rail lines had begun as a government-sponsored venture, but private investors soon began to make their fortune laying tracks across New Occident. The idea of a national railway was abandoned, and by mid-century two or three private companies owned every inch of track and every train car. The millionaires of the rail lines became the most powerful individuals in New Occident.

  —From Shadrack Elli’s History of New Occident

  THOUGH SOPHIA HAD traveled every summer with Shadrack, she had never been farther south than New York nor farther west than the Berkshires, and poring over maps of train routes had not prepared her for the thrill of riding an electric train over long distances.

  She felt light-headed as they sped out of Boston on the Seaboard Limited. She and Theo had a compartment for the entire journey to New Orleans; it had a long leather seat and two bunk beds that folded out of the wall, each with starched white sheets. Theo curled up on the top bunk and slept contentedly. Sophia wished she could sleep as well, but she could not even sit still, and she paced from door to window in the tiny wood-paneled compartment, willing herself to lose track of time. Her hand closed around the spool of silver thread in her skirt pocket and she gripped it hard, as if doing so would call the Fates to her side and make the train go faster. To distract herself, she began reviewing the list of things she had brought, consulting the train schedule, and calculating how long it would take to travel from the border to Nochtland.

  As they neared Providence, Rhode Island, she opened the window to look out onto the platform. The city spread out before her like a maze of brickwork dotted here and there with white steeples. Like a dark ribbon, the Blackstone Canal wove its way through the brick buildings. Dusty green trees bordered it on either side and surrounded the nearby train station, providing the only shade on the crowded wooden platform. The air smelled of sawdust and canal water. Police officers and station agents scrutinized tickets and identity papers, herding people into different compartments. Foreign families traveling together, lone exiles weighed down by overstuffed baggage and expressions of despondency—they all waited at the platforms alongside ordinary travelers who looked on curiously, sympathetically, or sometimes indifferently. The scene in Providence was repeated an hour later in the lush green flatlands of Kingston, where cows clustered in the occasional shade; everywhere the sense of disquiet was the same. The train left southern Rhode Island and coursed on into Connecticut.

  The windows of the railcar were wide open to let in the breeze, and Sophia leaned out to cool off. As the train made its way down the coast, she smelled the salt air and stared out at the small white sails skimming the ocean’s surface. It seemed to her that time had slowed to an unbearable pace. Sophia sighed. I have to make the time pass more quickly, she thought desperately, or this will feel eternal. She put aside all thought of East Ending Street, which she was leaving behind, and of Theo, with whom she had hardly exchanged a word since boarding, and she concentrated on the horizon.

  As she watched, the landscape changed. The tracks drew away from the coast and headed inland. Slender maples grew close to the rails, and she could smell the dusty scent of leaves that had stood all day in the sun. The train slowed as it approached the final stop in Connecticut, and Sophia watched the trees thin to reveal a low platform and a small station. Only a handful of people stood waiting. Her worries returned as she saw the travelers’ anxious faces. What would happen if Shadrack somehow returned home after she had ventured into the Baldlands, where Mrs. Clay would be unable to reach her? She felt a gnawing in her stomach. There was nothing she could do now; if Shadrack returned to Boston, he would have to follow her south.

  As Sophia fretted, she noticed two men speaking to the conductor by the station house. She could see only their backs, but it was clear that the conductor was afraid. He had pressed himself uncomfortably against the wall and was leaning as far away from them as his caved chest and the bricks would allow. As he listened, he fiddled with his bristly mustache, then adjusted his hat nervously. Suddenly, one of the men turned, surveying the platform, and his companion did the same. Sophia gasped. They were ordinary men, wearing nondescript clothing. But they had long, crescent-shaped scars across their cheeks. “Theo,” she called. “Come look at these two men.” As she spoke, the conductor blew the whistle.

  Theo, who had apparently been awake for some time, climbed down from his bunk and joined her at the window, but the men were gone. Sophia exhaled with frustration. “They must have boarded the train. There were two men with scars.” She traced from the corner of her mouth to her ear. “And you said the ones who came to East Ending had scars.”

  Theo sat next to her. “Well, if they’re on the train, we’ll probably see them. Unless they get off in New York. It’s probably just a coincidence. No shortage of scars in the world.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” she said, not entirely convinced.

  She took out her notebook and tried to distract herself by drawing, but this routine, which usually soothed her, made her more anxious: the book was full of Shadrack. The ordinary moments of their shared life—late-night meals after Shadrack’s long days, trips to the Boston museums, discussions about their new purchases from the Atlas Book Shop, scraps of paper with Shadrack’s rendering of Clockwork Cora—seemed heavy with the weight of things lost and irrecoverable. Quoted passages from his writings were scattered everywhere, speaking in a calm and reassuring voice about the way the world was and should be.

  Instead, she took out the atlas and began absently thumbing through its pages. Sophia had, of course, read most of it many times before, but the atlas seemed to take on new meaning when she thought of it as a guide to places she might actually visit. The long entry on New York described its wharf and parks and the large, indoor marketplaces. The illustrations captured very little of the rumbling coaches and horses and the smell of fish that Sophia remembered.

  She turned to the entry on the Baldlands. They were called the Baldlands, she knew, because of how they were described to the early explorers who ventured south and west from New Occident. “Tierras baldías,” the inhabitants of those places would say, meaning “fallow lands” or “unfarmed lands” in Spanish. But instead of translating the term completely, explorers translated only half, settling for “the baldlands.”

  There were three major cities within the Baldlands: Nochtland; the coastal city of Veracruz; and Xela, farther south. Historians posited that all three had emerged from the Disruption as admixtures of three principal Ages: the seventeenth century, as it was known in the old manner of reckoning; an era one thousand years prior to it; and an era one thousand years after it. Small pockets of other Ages existed as well, but the theory of the three eras was well establ
ished, and the cities were described collectively as the “Triple Eras.” The people of the Triple Eras followed an old religion that understood time as cyclical; the cycles of time were carried like wrapped bundles on the backs of the gods, who trudged tirelessly with their burdens. They were accommodating gods, accepting sacrifice and tribute and granting indulgences where they could.

  Beyond the Triple Eras, the Baldlands were far less cohesive. The man who had proclaimed the Baldlands an empire, Emperor Leopoldo Canuto, had cared little for conquest and exploration. Instead, in the early years after the Disruption, he had set about establishing a magnificent court at the heart of Nochtland, sparing no expense in transforming the chaotic city into a sprawling metropolis of splendors. His son, Emperor Julian, had followed in his footsteps, living in isolation with his courtiers and rarely leaving the city boundaries. During their rules, the remainder of the Baldlands had contentedly remained ungoverned. The collision of disparate Ages had unfolded in thousands of different ways, creating in some places peaceful havens and in others lawless expanses. These last had given the Baldlands their reputation for wildness, and it was true that roving bands of marauders had become powerful and greedy, owning entire towns as a farmer would own acres.

  Julian’s son Sebastian was the opposite of his father. Wholly uninterested in exploration for its own sake, he was undoubtedly a conqueror. When his young wife died, leaving him alone with a daughter, he made it his mission to bring the entire empire of the Baldlands into his fold. For the past twenty years, he had sent his soldiers into every corner of the Baldlands, attempting to weed out those who had for so long ignored the rule of law. But Sebastian had found it more difficult than he had expected. He would stamp out one band of raiders only to have another spring up in its place. Meanwhile his daughter, Justa, remained behind, ruling in his stead. The entry in Shadrack’s atlas indicated that the royal family in Nochtland bore the “Mark of the Vine” and not the “Mark of Iron,” terms Sophia had never heard before.

  “Have you ever seen Princess Justa?” she asked Theo now.

  He looked at her with an expression of amusement. “Never. Not many people have.”

  “What does it mean that she has the ‘Mark of the Vine’?”

  Theo turned to look out the window. “It’s just a thing they say about family lineage.”

  “Like a family crest?”

  “Sort of.”

  “It says in the atlas that there are more gardens than buildings in Nochtland,” Sophia said. “Are there?”

  Theo shrugged. “Sounds possible.”

  “You have been to Nochtland, haven’t you?” she asked somewhat acidly.

  “Of course I’ve been there. I’ve just never lived there.”

  “So if you’re not from Nochtland, where are you from?”

  “I’m from the Northern Baldlands.” He folded his hands together. “But I’ve been all over.”

  Sophia looked at him intently. “What about your parents? Are they in the northern Baldlands?” She paused. “Don’t you think they’re worried about you?”

  “I’m getting hungry.” Theo said abruptly, opening the basket Mrs. Clay had prepared. “Do you want anything?”

  Sophia narrowed her eyes. He was ill at ease, which made her more determined to find out why. “Isn’t anyone worried you ended up kidnapped in a circus, or does no one know?”

  Theo looked like he wanted very much to say, “None of your business,” but instead he asked, “Is that the man you saw on the platform?”

  Sophia turned in her seat. Standing in the corridor and clearly visible through the window of their compartment was a man with two long scars running from each corner of his mouth. “That’s him,” she whispered.

  He was arguing with a portly man of similar height who stood in his way in the corridor. As Sophia and Theo watched, the argument grew louder, and they could hear it through the compartment’s thin door. “I reserved my room weeks ago,” the portly man protested, “and I don’t give a fig what the conductor promised you. The compartment is mine.”

  The scarred man’s level response was inaudible.

  “I certainly will not wait in New York for another train. The very idea! Do you think I don’t know the value of money? I paid a great deal for that compartment.”

  The scarred man gave a short, quiet response.

  For a moment his antagonist stared at him with growing indignation as his face grew red. “When we get to New York City, sir,” he said slowly, “I will summon the first police officer I see and report you. You are a danger to the other passengers on this train.” He turned on his heel and stormed off. The scarred man stared after him for a moment. Then he shot a malevolent glance into their compartment, making Sophia recoil against her seat, and walked away.

  She sat for a moment in silence. “Definitely him. Was he one of the men from the house?”

  Theo shook his head. “I don’t think so. Similar kind of scars. But his face is different.”

  Perhaps it really is only a coincidence, she thought, but she could not entirely convince herself.

  A few hours later, the train stopped in New York City. At first, it seemed only a busier version of the other stations. Police officers corralled the waiting passengers and herded them toward the trains; vendors with rolling carts squeezed between them. The platform was littered with loose sheets of newspaper. A tall clock with a broken second hand hung between two parallel rails. And then Sophia caught her breath. “Theo. Come and look.”

  They watched in dismay as the man they’d seen arguing for his compartment was steered from the train by two men with scarred faces. Sophia gasped as they walked by. “Is that . . .” Her voice trailed off. She had seen the sharp glint of metal near the man’s ribs, and there was a look of suppressed terror on his face.

  “They’ve got something on him. A blade or a revolver,” Theo said softly. He whistled. “They really wanted that compartment.”

  Sophia watched in horror as the two led the man directly past a knot of police officers who were guiding passengers onto the train. One of the officers gave them a brief nod. “Did you see that? The police officer let them go by!”

  Theo shook his head. “Guess what they say about the police here is true.”

  “What should we do? Should we tell someone?”

  “No way,” Theo said emphatically. “If the police wouldn’t help that guy, who would? Hey, just be glad they’re off the train.”

  Sophia wrapped her arms around herself. “I am.”

  —15-Hour 49: On the Train Heading South—

  THE SEABOARD LIMITED left New York City near sixteen-hour. As night fell, Sophia finally unpacked a sandwich from the basket, forcing herself to swallow the bread and cheese. The porter came by to ensure they had bedding, and Theo climbed up into his bunk, asking Sophia for some of the maps to study. She eventually opened her own bunk and tried to read the atlas, but she could not get the terrified man on the platform out of her mind. Then her thoughts drifted to Shadrack, and her sense of anxiety grew even sharper. The ways of finding him had seemed fragile and uncertain in the daytime; at night, they seemed downright impossible. As she tried to read, she found she could not; her inner mind was trained on imagined horrors. Finally, with a sigh, she closed the atlas and held it tightly against her chest.

  She awoke a little while later with her cheek pressed against the book. A nightmare she could not remember had made her heart race, and she stood up to look through the window. Theo leaned over the edge of his bunk. “Thought you’d gone to sleep,” he said quietly.

  “I had. I’m not sleepy now.” She glanced at her watch; it was almost twenty-hour. Then she gazed at the full, pale moon that hung over the trees. “Do you know where we are?”

  “No idea. The last few stations have been too dark to read the signs.”

  Sophia rubbed her eyes. “I’m going to stretch my legs. We’ve been in here nearly the whole day.”

  Theo sat up, bumping his head against th
e roof of the compartment. “Ow. I’ll come with you.”

  “That’s fine.” Falling asleep full of worry and waking up in a strange place had dispelled her lingering resentment against Theo; she felt too tired, and there were too many other fears crowding the edges of her mind. She placed the atlas in her pack, shouldering it.

  They passed the silent compartments on either side as they walked toward the dining car. Cool night air leaked into the passageways from the windows. No one else on the train seemed to be awake, and the dining car was completely deserted but for the faint scent of polished silver and boiled potatoes. The bright moonlight made flame-lamps unnecessary; the entire room, with its white tablecloths and brass-tacked leather seats, was bathed in silver.

  “This is the longest I’ve ever been on a train,” Sophia said, taking a seat at one of the tables and looking out at the tracks.

  Theo sat down across from her. “Me, too. Actually, it’s the first time I’ve been on a train.”

  Sophia looked at him in surprise. “Really?”

  “I’d seen trains, but never been inside one.” He smiled wryly. “First time in New Occident, too. And right when they decide to close the borders.”

  Sophia smiled back. “You were too much for them. The last straw.”

  “Must have been. Too hot to handle.” He snapped his fingers and pointed the imaginary gun at her, closing the gesture with a wink. For a few minutes both of them sat in silence, staring out at the moon and the dark outline of the trees. Then Theo said, “Nobody’s worried.”

  Sophia looked at him. He was still staring out through the window. “What?” she asked.

  “A few people know Ehrlach got me, but they’re not worried.”

  “Why not?”

  Theo gave another smile, but his dark eyes, trained on the moon, were serious. “Every man for himself, like I said. I don’t have parents—that I know of. I lived with raiders on the western border, and they don’t care much if I’m there or in the circus or in the snows. It’s all the same to them.”