The Golden Specific

by S. E. Grove

  “Well, I think right now there probably is, if you would only bother to look.”

  Sophia took a deep breath, shelving her outrage for the moment. She leaned in toward the crack in the wall. She saw the tops of several books. Inching herself down, she saw the back of Shadrack’s chair, his shoulders, and the back of his head. Beyond him, in front of the curtained windows, sat a huge black-haired man whom she had only seen depicted in the Boston papers: MP Gordon Broadgirdle. He wore black and gray, with a charcoal felt hat that he held loosely in his lap. She realized then that the room was silent. Shadrack was staring at an open book.

  She drew back. “Shadrack is reading something. Broadgirdle is just sitting there.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “Shadrack?”

  “No—Broadgirdle.”

  She leaned back toward the wall. “Relaxed. Arrogant.” She hesitated. “Scary. I can’t say why.”

  “But what does he look like?”

  “Oh. Very tall. Broad-shouldered. He has black hair and a full beard and a wrinkly sort of mustache. I don’t like his eyes.”

  “What about his teeth?”

  “His teeth?” She turned to Theo in astonishment.

  “Yes, his teeth,” he whispered nervously.

  Then Sophia remembered when and where she had seen that look of panic on Theo’s face: Veracruz, almost one year ago, when a raider with sharp metal teeth had chased them through the market. “You recognize him,” she said, eyes wide.

  “I recognized his voice,” Theo replied. “I’ve never heard another like it. But I might be wrong. It could be a coincidence. Can you see his teeth?”

  Sophia tried again. “I can’t,” she said soberly. “His mouth is closed. But I think someone would have mentioned it if Broadgirdle had metal teeth. No one in New Occident has them.” She paused. “Why don’t you look?”

  Theo took a deep breath and wiped his palms on his pants. “Okay. Okay, I’ll look at him.” He dove forward and peered through the crack. After several seconds, he pulled back.

  Just as he did, Shadrack spoke; his voice, wary and more than a little defensive, reached them clearly in the closet. “I didn’t write this.”

  Sophia leaned in to watch. Broadgirdle was smiling, revealing a row of very large, very white teeth. “Not yet, perhaps.”

  “No. Not ever. I have not written this and never will. This is not me.”

  “Shadrack,” Broadgirdle said earnestly, bending forward so that his massive shoulders crowded the space between them, “there is a larger purpose here. We are behind. Terribly behind. Those maps prove it.”

  “I don’t see it that way. You know I have a very clearly defined view on policy for the Indian Territories. It is not our land.”

  Broadgirdle suddenly rose from his seat and placed his hat carefully on his head. “I want you to think carefully about your next move, Shadrack. You have a choice, and it could be the right choice or the wrong one. I would be so disappointed if you made the wrong one. So let me say that I will be very glad to hear it is the right one.” He was still smiling, the thin mustache, wiry and mobile, contorting with the effort. But his words had no warmth to them. “Good evening. I will see you at the ministry tomorrow. I’ll let myself out.” He nodded. “Keep the book.”

  Shadrack sat motionless in his chair as Broadgirdle left the room. “I don’t understand,” Sophia whispered anxiously to Theo, still watching. “What choice? What is he talking about?”

  Theo didn’t answer. She turned and saw him slumped against the closet wall with a lost, pained look on his face. “Theo,” she said, reaching out to clasp his scarred hand. “Is it him? The man you know?”

  His words were almost inaudible. “It’s him.”

  “But he had white teeth. They were normal.”

  “He must have covered them somehow. Ivory caps or something.”

  “Who is he? Is he another raider?”

  Theo shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Sophia frowned. She was about to remonstrate him when she heard Shadrack finally rising from his chair. Through the peephole, she watched him open the hidden door to the map room. “Miles, Bligh. He’s gone,” Shadrack called down. Then he dropped back into his seat.

  A moment later, the two men emerged from the map room. Sophia could not see the prime minister, but Miles went to Shadrack immediately. “What did he say?” he demanded.

  Shadrack simply handed Miles the book. “He gave me this.”

  Bligh joined Miles, looking over his shoulder as the explorer first frowned at the cover, and then began furiously turning the pages. “What does he mean by giving you this dreck?”

  Shadrack did not answer.

  “I believe I understand,” Bligh said slowly, a sad expression in his gray eyes. “He wants you to feel as though you are already committed to this path. That this future is inevitable.”

  “Because of this?” Miles protested. “But that’s absurd!”

  “Of course it is.” Shadrack’s voice was weary. “But Cyril is right. That is what he wants. Naturally, I did not accede to his demands.”

  “And what will be the consequence?”

  “He did not say,” Shadrack replied. “We are to speak tomorrow.”

  “We are pressed on both sides,” Bligh said quietly. At Shadrack’s inquiring look, he added, “I was just telling Miles what Lorange informed me today. While Broadgirdle is bent on dissolving treaties with the Indian Territories, the United Indies are threatening an embargo if we do not reopen the borders.”

  Shadrack let out a breath. “An embargo would ruin us. Half our trade is to the Indies. Boston would starve.”

  “Of course it would. We must stop it at any cost.” He put his hand on Shadrack’s shoulder. “But you have been burdened with enough for one evening. Get your rest, and we will speak of it tomorrow.”

  Shadrack rose to his feet. “Thank you, Cyril. Though I’m afraid it will be a sleepless night. And we have one more matter to discuss,” he added. “The Eerie.”

  Miles shook his head. “I told him when we were downstairs. I could find no trace of where they are this season.”

  The prime minister sighed. “Poor Goldenrod. I’m afraid she’s going to die on our hands, my friends.”

  “I am sorry to let you down,” Miles said, his voice heavy with regret. “I was certain I would find them. I was somewhat constrained by Theo’s presence, but in any case I needed to return. My best contact told me that the Eerie had departed for the Prehistoric Snows, which will require a different manner of expedition.”

  “You plan to head north?” asked Shadrack.

  “At the end of the week. I’ll take a route directly into the snows.”

  “Very well,” the prime minister said as he left the study, his footsteps falling lightly on the floorboards. “Though I worry that Goldenrod may not make it through the summer.”

  “Believe me,” Shadrack said quietly, “we are well aware of it.”

  As Shadrack and Miles followed Bligh out, Sophia sat back, her brow furrowed. She turned to ask Theo what he knew about the Eerie and Goldenrod but found, to her surprise, that he was gone.

  —19-Hour 54—

  IN THE FALL and early winter, before Theo had departed with Miles for the Eerie Sea, Sophia and Theo would sometimes stay awake talking until the early hours. Theo’s room—a fourth bedroom on the second floor that had previously been tenanted by roughly five thousand disordered maps—was across the hall from Sophia’s, and it shared a wall with the house next door. Almost every night, the neighbors would play music on their Edison phonograph—a wondrous invention as yet owned by no one else in the neighborhood. Sophia and Theo would listen to the music, or talk and listen, or just talk. Many late nights were spent laughing so hard they had to cover their faces with pillows to avoid waki
ng Shadrack. Many nights were spent remembering the previous summer: their trip by train to New Orleans, the pirates, their journey into Nochtland, and their confrontation with Blanca and the Sandmen.

  Sophia had not realized how important those evenings with the Edison phonograph had been until Theo and Miles had gone. And she had not realized, until she found Theo vanished from the closet, that she had been expecting to end this evening talking conspiratorially with her best friend, listening to the muted music next door. When Miles and Shadrack returned to the study and then descended to the map room, clearly intent on further discussion of Broadgirdle’s visit, Sophia crept out of the closet and up the stairs.

  Theo’s door was closed. When Sophia knocked quietly, there was no answer. “Theo?” Sophia said, knocking again. “Are you all right?” She waited, her ear to the door. After several seconds she began to worry. “Theo. Are you there?”

  There was a quiet scuffle as Theo walked across the room toward the door. “I’m here,” came the muffled reply.

  “May I come in?”

  There was a long pause. “I’m sorry. I can’t talk right now.”

  Sophia stood at the door, astonished. “All right,” she finally said.

  In her own room, she took out her notebook, struggling with what she knew was an unreasonable sense of injury. Theo had been frightened by something, and she understood the impulse to shut himself away. But she did wish he could have taken comfort in her company.

  For a time she wrote and drew, filling a page with the news of the evening: an account of the beaded map; a drawing of Bligh; and Broadgirdle, hulking and full of menace. When she heard Shadrack’s footstep on the stairs, she looked at her watch and found that it was already two-hour.

  “You are still awake?” Shadrack asked, standing in her doorway.

  “I was waiting for you,” she replied.

  He stayed in the doorway. “Sorry to keep you up so long.”

  “What happened?”

  Sophia watched Shadrack’s tired face contract slightly. “Broadgirdle had some ludicrous proposal about dissolving the treaties, just as Cyril said.” He looked at the notebook before her. “Writing your thoughts for the day?”

  “But what did the prime minister mean by ‘leverage’?” Sophia asked, ignoring his question.

  Shadrack ran a hand through his hair. “Broadgirdle has a nasty habit of using information about people to threaten them. If he found out I wasn’t really a cartologer, but that all my maps were drawn by you and Mrs. Clay, I would do anything he asked for him to keep my secret.”

  Sophia didn’t smile at the feeble joke. “Did he threaten you?”

  “No, no. He didn’t threaten me. He’s an unsavory character, and I have no wish to lock horns with him. But he was on good behavior tonight.” He smiled. “Truly. I would tell you if there were reason to worry.”

  “Would you?”

  “Of course.” Shadrack smiled reassuringly, but there was nothing reassuring about the emptiness of his smile, or the worry in his eyes.

  8

  Index A.D. 82: Volume 27

  —1892, June 3: 5-Hour 32—

  The Papal States emerged from the Great Disruption in what historians of the past would have termed the fifteenth century. And yet not entirely: within the Papal States, pockets of other Ages were gradually identified. Some were unpopulated and hardly noticeable; others were so small as to be insignificant; still others, no doubt, have yet to be found. But one was impossible to ignore: an Age from a past so remote, its landscape was unrecognizable. Occupying a hundred square miles west of Seville and east of Granada, it is known as the Dark Age.

  —From Shadrack Elli’s Atlas of the New World

  A SLIGHT SOUND woke Sophia the next morning. She opened her eyes a crack. All the familiar occupants of her bedroom rested quietly in the gray light of early dawn: the neatly ordered desk, the painting of Salem above it, the rows of books, the wooden desk chair piled with pillows, and the folded clothes over the back of the chair. But there was one unexpected occupant—a figure standing by the window.

  “Shadrack?” she mumbled. The figure turned. Sophia opened her eyes and saw a familiar shape in a long traveling dress. Her voice, low in timbre and just above a whisper, seemed to fill the room: “Take the offered sail.” Then her face came into focus. It was Minna.

  Sophia sat up abruptly. “What?” she whispered.

  Minna smiled slightly. In the dawn light, the peculiar texture of her dress and skin were more clearly visible: she seemed made of crumpled paper, translucent but tangible. Sophia could just see the contours of the desk behind her. “Take the offered sail.”

  “What do you mean, the offered sail?” Sophia rose, ready to take a step closer—

  The figure was gone.

  Sophia stood staring, eyes wide and heart pounding, at the place where her mother had been. Then she sat back down slowly. As before, the sight of Minna made her overjoyed and anxious at the same time. What did it mean? What sail? Sophia felt a flash of frustration at the riddle, and then she reminded herself that whether or not she understood the words, Minna’s appearance was a sign—a sign from the Fates.

  I have to find what I’m looking for at the Nihilismian Archive, she said to herself. Today. She hurriedly pulled on the clothes from her chair—a cotton skirt with side pockets, a linen shirt with horn buttons, gray socks, and her worn brown boots—and thrust her lifewatch and the spool of silver thread into her skirt pocket.

  As she brushed and then braided her hair, glancing at herself in the small oval mirror hanging inside her wardrobe, a door opened and closed downstairs: Shadrack was already leaving for the ministry. Sophia quickly packed her satchel and descended to the kitchen, casting a glance at Theo’s closed door on the way. She ate breakfast alone in the silent house.

  The beaded map lay on the kitchen table where Shadrack had left it the night before. She unrolled the square of linen and eyed it thoughtfully, remembering the sense of delight she had felt when they all began reading it together. It had been short-lived.

  The unexpected sound of a door opening on the second floor interrupted her thoughts. A moment later, Theo padded down the stairs and joined her at the table, reaching comfortably across it for the bread and butter. She studied him. The fear she had seen in his face the day before had vanished. He was once again the unflappable Theo she knew so well.

  He smiled. “Morning.”

  Sophia stared. “That’s it?” she asked indignantly.

  He gave her a look of wide-eyed innocence. “What?”

  “You wouldn’t even open your door last night. Are you going to tell me why?”

  Theo shrugged, buttering his bread liberally.

  “Is he a raider?”

  “Yeah,” he replied, noncommittally.

  “I guess what you said before about not lying to me isn’t true anymore,” she murmured.

  Theo put the bread down. “I’m sorry.” His voice was sober and serious. “I just can’t talk about it. I have to figure some things out first.”

  Sophia leaned back in her chair. She reminded herself that the previous summer, she had so often doubted Theo; she had pressed him for answers, and he had kept his silence for good reason. For a moment the sight of his scarred hand, cut again by the guard of Nochtland, flashed before her. “All right. I won’t ask more. But just the same,” she added, “when you’re ready to talk about who he is, I’d like to know.”

  He grinned, giving her a snap of the fingers that ended in a gesture like a pointed gun. “You’ll be the first to hear.” He nodded at the map, changing the subject. “Made any progress?”

  “No—I haven’t started reading it yet.”

  “We can do it today, if you want. Head over to see Miles and read it there.”

  Sophia looked down at the table. “I have to go to the archive.”
/>
  Theo chewed thoughtfully. “Okay. When are you getting back?”

  “Not until the end of the day.”

  “I guess I’ll head over to see Miles on my own, then,” Theo said, reaching for another piece of bread.

  “To ask him about the Eerie?” At his obvious confusion, she added, “You must have left before he started talking about it.” She recounted the overheard conversation and the worried comments about someone named Goldenrod who might not make it through the summer. “Did you know Miles was looking for the Eerie?”

  “He didn’t say a thing about it. Deceitful old codger. Keeping things from me.” Theo didn’t seem particularly bothered.

  Sophia took the spool of silver thread from her pocket and worried the top of it, running her thumb over the wood. “You’re not the only one. Shadrack didn’t mention it to me, either. Maybe that was the whole reason for the trip—nothing to do with my parents or Ausentinia. Just to look for the Eerie.”

  “I’m sure Shadrack had good reasons for not telling you.”

  “And do you think he had good reason for pretending the conversation with Broadgirdle went well? Because he did.”

  Theo finished buttering his second piece of bread. “I’m not totally surprised.”

  Sophia frowned. “What does that mean?”

  He chewed, avoiding Sophia’s eyes. “Let’s just say that peephole has been very informative.”

  Sophia’s frown deepened. “It’s wrong to spy on Shadrack. We shouldn’t have done it.” Then she realized more fully what Theo meant. “You mean he lies to us about other things?”

  Theo looked uncomfortable. “I didn’t say that. But you know he has an important job, with complicated things happening all the time. He probably can’t tell you everything.”

  Sophia rose from the kitchen table. “I have to go.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  She felt a wave of frustration. “Maybe not, but you did. And since we were spying, I can’t just ask him outright about what I heard.”