The Glass Sentence (The Mapmakers Trilogy)

by S. E. Grove

  In the pale light it was hard to see Theo’s expression, but to Sophia his face looked more thoughtful than sad. “What happened to your parents?”

  “I don’t know. Never met them. From the earliest I remember, me and the other kids lived with one raider or another.”

  Sophia could not even imagine it. “So who took care of you?”

  “Older kids, mostly. An older girl was the one who found me. Sue. She found me in an empty barrel behind some watering hole.”

  “What’s a watering hole?”

  “A saloon. A tavern.” Theo turned and met her eyes. “She got me clothes. Gave me my name. Fed me for years. Then I just took care of myself. It’s easier that way. They come and go; so do I. No burdens, no worries.”

  His brown eyes looked back at her directly, and she had the sense that her whole idea of who he was had suddenly shifted. What was it was like to be alone—truly alone? “Why didn’t you say so earlier? Like when Mrs. Clay asked you?”

  Theo tossed his head. “People feel sorry for me when I tell them. Older people, especially. You know?”

  Sophia did know. “So how did Ehrlach find you?”

  “We were trading on the border—selling horses to a man from New Akan. Those border towns are full of people buying and selling everything. Ehrlach seemed like just one more dealer trying to get something cheap. He bought a horse from Aston—that’s the raider me and some other guys had been living with—and asked me to bring it into his tent. Aston said, go ahead, deliver it. Moment I got in the tent, he had men standing around me with long knives. I’ve had my share of one-sided knife fights,” he said, holding up his scarred right hand, “and I didn’t mind another. I tried to get on the horse and go, but they weren’t having it. We were gone before Aston ever missed me.” He gave a flat laugh. “Not that he missed me.”

  He spoke of it all so lightly, with the casual, almost sloppy diction of the Northern Baldlands that made the words seem thrown together every which way. But his easy manner could not entirely muffle the sharp edges of pain that lay underneath: shards of broken glass under a thin rug. Sophia felt something odd in her chest, like a surge of admiration and sadness all at once. His air of being above it all—above every danger, above every indignity—came at a price. “I guess you don’t miss Aston, either.”

  Theo grinned broadly. “Nope.”

  Now it was Sophia’s turn to look away. She kept her eyes on the moon as she said, “I can’t remember my parents, but I know a lot about them. I’m lucky. I had Shadrack to tell me. They left when I was little. To go exploring. And they got lost and never came back. Shadrack could have gone to look for them, but he had to take care of me.” Sophia didn’t know why she had put it that way, except that it had occurred to her for the first time that she had prevented Shadrack from going in search of Minna and Bronson. She had lost her parents, but Shadrack had lost his sister, and yet he had never even suggested that Sophia had stood in the way of finding her.

  They sat in silence for a minute, watching the moonlight flicker onto the table as it hit the trees. “Shadrack was teaching me how to read maps,” Sophia continued, “so we could go find them together. But the truth is they would be strangers to me. Shadrack was my mother and father.”

  “You mean he is,” Theo corrected her. “We’ll find him. Have you figured out how to read the glass map yet?”

  Sophia reached for her pack. “How did you know this was a map? Most people only know about paper maps.”

  “They’re not so uncommon.”

  She drew the glass map from the pillowcase and placed it carefully on the table between them. As the two of them peered at it, something remarkable happened. The moon rose above the tree line, and its light fell fully onto the pane of glass. Suddenly an image sprang to life on its surface. The map had awoken.

  12

  Travel by Moonlight

  1891, June 22: 19-Hour #

  Among those maps that have made their way into museum collections and university libraries are certain maps of the New World that cartologers of New Occident have not yet learned to read. Either because they were crafted by ancient civilizations or because they reflect some yet undiscovered learning, they are simply illegible to even the most expert Western cartologers.

  —From Shadrack Elli’s History of New Occident

  “MOONLIGHT!” SOPHIA BREATHED, leaning in toward the map. “I should have thought of that.”

  Theo bent forward. “What’s it doing?”

  “The glass maps respond to light. Usually just lamplight or sunlight. It never occurred to me that there might be some made for moonlight.” She kept her eyes on the map, trying to understand the lines that were unfolding on its surface.

  It was unlike those she’d seen in Shadrack’s map room. Apart from the mapmaker’s insignia, there were no clocks and no legend of any kind along the edge. Luminous, silvery writing filled the pane from top to bottom. Most of it was unintelligible. In the middle were five sentences in different languages using the Roman alphabet. The sentence in English read, “You will see it through me.” Sophia still remembered enough of the Latin taught to her by the diligent graduate student to realize that the Latin words a few lines down said exactly the same thing.

  She shook her head. “I can’t even tell if this is a map. I’ve never seen anything like it. But if it’s a memory map we can read it, even if we don’t understand the writing.”

  “It has to mean something.”

  She glanced over the map, unsure of where to place her fingertip. “Try touching part of the surface.” They placed their fingertips on different points at the same time.

  Sophia had never before experienced such violent emotions from reading a map. Before even seeing anything, she felt awash with an overwhelming sense of desperation and fear. Her heart was pounding; she kept turning her head one way and then another; but nothing was clear and the sense of panic gathered, making every detail around her meaningless, confused, and chaotic.

  She felt surrounded by people who were clearly present, but indistinct. They stood to her left, as if lining a long corridor, and they stepped forward to speak with her. Each voice drowned out the next, and she could not make out anything they said. With a sense of mounting alarm she climbed upward, but she could not see the stairs below her feet. She pushed past everyone toward a quiet spot high above. The feeling of desperation mounted. She knew the memory was not hers, but it felt as though she, Sophia, were shoving against some heavy object with all her might. Then she felt it giving way, and then rolling, and then, quite suddenly, falling.

  For a few moments she felt herself standing, immobile, as the tension of waiting made every nerve in her body tingle. And then the unseen structure around her began to tremble and shake. She knew without a doubt that soon everything around her would collapse.

  She dove back into the corridor lined with people. She ignored them, her heart about to explode in her chest as she ran down along the spiraling passageway. The floor shook beneath her feet and she stumbled and scrambled back up and ran on. People appealed to her as she passed, but their words made no sense; she would not hear them—they were unimportant. Her running grew more frantic. A door awaited her—an unseen door that lay somewhere ahead—but she had not yet reached it and the walls around her had begun to fall to pieces. The fear was blinding. All she could see was the blank space in front of her where there had to be a door and there was not. She felt the steps crumbling beneath her.

  Then, suddenly, she burst through a doorway—though the door itself was nothing more than a blur. Ahead of her, beyond the opening, there was no one and nothing. The world was empty. There was a faint glimmer in the distance that grew brighter: someone was running toward her. The memory faded.

  Sophia pulled back abruptly and saw that Theo had done the same. “What did you remember?” she asked.

  “I was in a place filled with people,” Theo said haltingly, clearly shaken. “And I pushed something, and then the place start
ed falling apart and I ran out.”

  “I saw the same thing.” She found that she was breathing hard. They stared at one another. Sophia saw her distress and need for comprehension mirrored in Theo’s eyes. “What do you think happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Theo said slowly. “I guess someone destroyed this place—whatever it is. No way to know why.”

  “I think whoever did it might have been the only person to survive.” Sophia said. “And this map is their memory of it.”

  “But where is it? When did it happen?”

  “I don’t know. It’s hard to tell, because all we can see are the people. We can’t see the building or the area around it. We need the other layers of mapping to see those.” She shook her head. “There must be some reason why he left it for me. Maybe I’m not supposed to understand it. Maybe I’m just supposed to take care of it.”

  “It’s not much fun to watch,” Theo said sourly.

  “No, it’s horrible.” Sophia lifted the pane of glass and gently turned it over. As she slid the blank map back into the pillowcase, a movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. She looked up across the dining car at the glass porthole in the door that stood closed at the far end. Someone was watching.

  Sophia stared back, frozen. The man who’d been arguing outside their compartment was looking straight at her. He held her gaze for a moment, menacingly, and then turned away. “Let’s get out of here,” Sophia whispered, returning the map to her pack.

  “What’s wrong?” Theo looked over his shoulder.

  “He’s there—the man with the scars. He didn’t get off in New York.” Theo quickly made his way over to the door and peered through the glass. “Don’t,” Sophia whispered fiercely.

  Theo squinted into the corridor beyond. “He’s gone.”

  Sophia shouldered her pack, and they hurried to the opposite end of the car. “He saw us read the map,” Sophia whispered anxiously, as they made their way through the train.

  “So what? He doesn’t know what it is.”

  She shook her head. “It can’t be a coincidence.”

  They entered their car and Theo opened the compartment door with Sophia on his heels. Then he stopped in his tracks. Sophia bumped into him. A single lamp cast flickering shadows across the walls and upholstery. Scattered across the seat, a pair of revolvers and an assortment of knives glittered in the pale moonlight. A massive grappling hook with sharp points gleamed beside them. Sophia gasped.

  Theo turned around and pushed her out through the doorway. They scurried out into the hallway and into their compartment one door down, where they stood in the moonlit room, catching their breath. “It’s him—he’s right next door,” Sophia finally managed. She felt as though it took all the air in her lungs to speak.

  “We’ll go tell the conductor and get another room.”

  “No, we can’t. He was talking to the conductor before. And I saw how the conductor looked. He was terrified. That’s how he got the room in the first place,” she whispered desperately.

  Theo thought for a moment. “How much longer to Charleston, do you think?”

  “I have no idea. I didn’t—I can’t keep track of time.” Her voice trembled.

  “It’s okay,” Theo said reassuringly, misunderstanding her distress. He put his hand out to rest on her shoulder. “Look, he would have already come in here if he wanted to hurt us, right? Just now in the dining room, he could have easily barged in. If he hasn’t done anything, it’s because he doesn’t want to.”

  Sophia nodded and took a deep breath. “We have to stay in the compartment,” she said. “Until we get to Charleston.”

  —June 23, 9-Hour 51—

  SOPHIA AWOKE TO find the compartment full of sunlight. She could not believe she had fallen asleep. The thought of their well-armed stalker only one room away had kept them both on edge. They had stayed awake until the early morning, too tense to sleep, talking intermittently and watching the door like hawks. Now Theo was folded up in an uncomfortable position on the bench, fast asleep. Sophia looked at her watch and saw with surprise that it was almost ten-hour. As she stood, Theo awoke. He rubbed his eyes and squinted groggily at the window. “Where are we?”

  An overcast sky and a blur of foliage as far as the eye could see told her nothing. “I’m not sure.”

  Theo groaned and got to his feet, stretching. His borrowed clothes were rumpled and his brown eyes had a foggy look about them. “Well, I’m glad we’re not dead.” Sophia gave him a stark look. He pulled out the basket and began hunting through it for breakfast. “We’ll have to buy food in the dining car after lunch.”

  “After lunch we can wait until Charleston,” Sophia said. “We’ll be getting there around dinnertime. If the train is on time.”

  Theo nodded, chewing thoughtfully on a piece of fruit loaf. Sophia had some as well, swallowing as much as she could and washing it down with water.

  He stood up a moment later. “I have to go to the washroom.”

  “I know; me too. I guess there’s no choice. I’ll go after you. Be careful.”

  After he left, Sophia watched the passing trees, waiting for the train to stop at a station so that she would know where they were. She was preoccupied with something that had occurred to her as she was falling asleep; she could not quite remember it. The idea flitted at the edge of her mind, just out of reach. She pulled out her drawing notebook and filled a page aimlessly, hoping the idea would surface. As the train slowed, Sophia checked the sign on the platform. She consulted the train schedule and noted with relief that they were running on time.

  The trees beside the tracks nodded in the breeze, and suddenly a sparrow flitted past, swooped back, and perched on the edge of the sill. It turned its head one way and then the other, as if inspecting the compartment. Sophia slowly reached for her sketchbook. She opened it quietly, took a pencil, and began drawing. She lost track of time as her hand moved quickly across the page. The sparrow studied her. Hopping lightly across the sill, it fluttered abruptly onto the seat beside Sophia, seized a crumb in its beak, and flew back to the sill. Then the whistle blew, shattering the quiet, and a moment later the train lurched forward. The sparrow burst out into the air—it was gone. Sophia looked after it wistfully and glanced down at her drawing. And suddenly the idea that had been hovering at the edge of her mind flew directly into view.

  She was sitting on the top bunk reading the atlas when Theo returned. He was not alone. His expression furious, he stalked into the room followed by four men: the scarred man they’d seen in the moonlit dining car and three others. Two of the others had identical scars across their faces. As they entered, Sophia noticed the amulets hanging from their necks. Two were wooden on leather laces; one was bronze on a slender bronze chain. They all bore the Nihilismian sign of the open hand. All three scarred men had grappling hooks, which hung from their belts on long, carefully coiled ropes. The fourth man, tall and well-dressed, had no scars, no grappling hook, and no amulet. With a thin mustache above a calm smile and a gray suit that seemed more fitted to a summer wedding than a railway heist, he seemed utterly out of place. His pale blue eyes settled on Sophia.

  While Theo and the three scarred men, stone-faced, crowded uncomfortably near the drawn curtains, the tall man sat down and smiled at Sophia with an expression of easy amusement. The space around them seemed impossibly small, as if they had all squeezed into a wardrobe.

  “So!” the tall man said, giving her a wide, thin smile. “You keep yourself hidden away, locked up like a princess in a tower.”

  Sophia stared at him coldly. “I’m not a princess.” She was pleased that she sounded calm, although her stomach was churning with fear.

  The man laughed, as if he found this a very good joke indeed. “No, you certainly are not, Miss Tims.”

  “You know who I am. Who are you?”

  “Call me Montaigne.” He folded his arms comfortably across his chest. “You may not be a princess, Miss Tims, but I hear you have a pie
ce of treasure worthy of one.”

  “I doubt it,” she said evenly.

  Montaigne inclined his head to one side. “Come, Miss Tims. You know very well that it is no ordinary sheet of glass. Mortify here”—he waved at the man closest to him—“has seen it work. Moonlight, is it? Very clever.” He winked. “I understand how valuable it is, which is why I’m willing to pay for it. Name your price.”

  Sophia shook her head. “It’s not for sale.”

  “In New Occident,” Montaigne said, raising his eyebrows, “everything is for sale.” He reached into his jacket and drew out a long leather wallet. “Name the price, Miss Tims.”

  “No matter what you say, I’m not selling it.”

  Montaigne’s smile shrank at the edges. He stood up and put his hand to his head as if thinking. “Here’s the thing, Miss Tims,” he said. “Between the four of us, we have six revolvers. That makes three revolvers for each of you. A generous distribution, by any account. Added to which, you’re clearly not familiar with the ways of the Sandmen. For your sake, I hope you never have the need to know them better. You see, those fishhooks the Sandmen carry always snag the little fishes, however slippery they may be.” He tapped his cheek with a forefinger. “But I’ve never enjoyed taking things by force. It’s cheap. It’s distasteful. And,” he said, lifting the grappling hook nearest to him with one finger, “it can be so messy.” He walked up to the bunk so that his face was just in front of Sophia’s knees. Sophia recoiled, shifting farther back. “I would much rather arrange mutually beneficial terms. If you won’t take currency, perhaps you’ll be interested in an exchange. Does bartering appeal to you?”

  “That depends,” Sophia said. “What do you have to trade?”

  The smile was back on Montaigne’s face. “Just about anything. What would you like?”

  “Shadrack. You can have the glass if you give me Shadrack.”