The Crimson Skew

by S. E. Grove

  “What is a microscope?” Errol asked.

  Wren smiled. “I am making this too complicated. Errol, how would you communicate the purpose of the True Cross to someone who had never heard of it? Sophia, how would you explain the workings of modern medicine? The Ars are like this: a system of meaning and thought with so many centuries behind it that you must be fully immersed to understand it. And being fully immersed, you have trouble explaining the assumptions—they seem obvious to you. You understand them without knowing how.”

  “Is this the secret that the League is keeping?” Sophia asked. “The Ars?” She did not entirely understand Wren’s explanation, either, but she understood his saying that the Ars might be incomprehensible from a distance. Memory maps were like that—impossible to imagine until one had immersed oneself in the memories. Perhaps the Ars were similar: an entire world springing into being, a world that could not be described, only experienced.

  “No, no.” Wren shook his head. “That—that I will tell you another time. I merely mention the Ars so you understand how I was accused and sentenced so easily. While I was out on the ocean they knew nothing, but once I returned and was in their hands . . . everything was revealed to them. I did not even know that your parents had called me with the watch, Sophia, because I was serving my sentence already. By the time I found out—when I was released, only a few months ago—it was far too late. Still, I felt keenly my promise to help them and my failure in keeping it. I communicated with Cassia—Remorse—in New Occident, and we made a plan. Your extraction was not originally what we intended, Goldenrod, but when we learned of your circumstances, Cassia improvised.”

  “But if they punished you before for helping my parents,” Sophia said, “surely they would not let you help me now.”

  Wren looked down at his hands. “You are quite right. I can never return to Australia. I left knowing I would be a fugitive for the rest of my days.”

  Sophia looked at him wide-eyed, shocked at how much this near-stranger had lost for the sake of her and her parents. She thought of the pins that had dotted Shadrack’s map in the underground map room—the pins tracking possible sightings of Minna and Bronson after their disappearance. To think, she realized, that each of those pins could be someone like Richard Wren. Someone not just catching a glimpse of Minna and Bronson, but helping them—at great cost.

  “And will the League give pursuit?” asked Calixta.

  “Perhaps. But I suspect they have more important matters to attend to. I am a very small fish in their ocean. Most likely they will cast a rather loose net, hoping it will catch me some time. I have done everything possible to ensure they will not.”

  • • •

  IT SEEMED NOW that Wren had been very wrong. Or perhaps, Sophia reasoned, two thousand pieces of silver were a loose net for the League: they advertised a reward and waited for the pirates and smugglers and merchants of the Indies to do their work for them. But it did not seem that they had decided to forget about Richard Wren—not yet.

  On the four-day journey to New Orleans, Wren set out to change his appearance. Since the flyer had showed him long-haired and bearded, he shaved his face and head. After that, Calixta painted his face, arms, and hands with a lasting ink, drawing the elaborate swirls and patterned lines typical of the Indies tattoos.

  The Swan approached the harbor at midday, and its passengers had their first glimpse of the weather that had plagued New Occident for weeks. A bank of yellowish clouds lay piled like cotton batting to the edges of the horizon. “I have never seen clouds of that kind,” Goldenrod murmured.

  “What makes them yellow?” asked Sophia.

  Goldenrod shook her head. “I do not know. Perhaps dust?” She frowned. “They seem so still.” The clouds hung low and heavy over the docks; even with the breeze from the ocean, the air felt packed and stale.

  Calixta’s enthusiasm was not dampened by the foul weather. As soon as they had dropped anchor, she left the Swan in the hands of the skeleton crew that had manned it and hurried to secure two coaches. “Before we go to Maxine’s,” Calixta announced, “I must purchase a few things in the shops.”

  Burr groaned.

  “It was your idea!” Calixta protested.

  “I only said that to persuade you to leave.”

  “Well, it was very sound advice, and I intend to take it. Sophia rides with me.”

  “I don’t need anything.” Sophia had changed back into her worn travel clothes at the first possible moment, and she had no desire to find herself trapped once more in an elaborate silk cocoon, no matter how fashionable it might be.

  Calixta eyed Sophia’s footwear meaningfully. “What about new boots?”

  Sophia looked down. One of the laces was torn and knotted in several places. The heels were worn down by half-moons. “Well,” she admitted, “maybe new boots wouldn’t be bad. If we’re going to be traveling north for so long.”

  “Excellent!” Calixta bustled Sophia into the waiting coach and waved merrily to the others. “We’ll see you at Maxine’s in a couple of hours. Maybe a little more,” she amended.

  Burr rolled his eyes. “Before nightfall, Calixta. Do try.”

  Calixta settled into her seat, tapping the roof lightly. “Henri’s boot shop on Rue Royale, please, driver,” she called.

  As the coach jostled forward, Calixta pressed Sophia’s knee. “You must be thinking of the last time we were here. With Theo.”

  Sophia nodded. “Yes. It seems so long ago.” She looked out the window at the retreating harbor, remembering how she had lost track of time trying to find the pirates’ ship. She recalled the sudden appearance of Burr, the mad scramble to climb the gangplank, the Sandmen in pursuit, and Theo taking aim at a barrel of molasses. The last thought brought a smile to her face.

  “You’ll be back in Boston soon, sweetheart,” Calixta said. “And won’t Theo be envious when he learns of all your adventures!”

  Sophia’s smile grew wistful. “I think he will be. Especially that I’ve spent so much time with you and Burr.”

  Calixta laughed. “Poor thing. I’m sure he’s bored to pieces these days. Now,” she said, with a businesslike air, “apart from boots for you, we both need to get some new hats, petticoats, at least a pair of dresses, slippers for the evening, stockings, small clothes, not to mention a brush, hairpins, soap . . . what else?”

  “That seems quite enough.”

  “Ah!” Calixta exclaimed. “Stop here, driver!” She tapped the roof. “Perfume, of course.”

  As soon as they came to a halt, she pulled Sophia from the coach. “I really don’t think—” Sophia started.

  “Please, don’t question me when it comes to purchases. It isn’t wise.” Calixta looked up at the driver. “Wait here.”

  They were on the outskirts of the city center, and a long street lined with shops stretched before them. A millinery stood open across the way, and a pair of ladies carrying parasols looked in the window, admiring the hats. Next door, a girl in a white apron swept the steps of a pastry shop. Sophia glanced up at the sign over the doorway through which Calixta was leading her: VINCENT PULIO’S FINE FRAGRANCES.

  Scents of orange blossom and almond, musk and cinnamon, gardenia and rose wafted through the air. Calixta headed toward the counter while Sophia looked around her. Delicate tables dotted the room like little islands, laden with glass bottles. The walls were lined with shelves, where heavy jars labeled Magnolia and Honeysuckle and Meadow stood side by side. A portly man with a carefully groomed mustache stood behind the glass counter, wiping the ornate atomizers in his display case with a white cloth.

  “Vincent!” Calixta greeted him.

  “Ah!” The portly man looked up, startled. “Captain Morris.” He glanced at the doorway and then at the back of the shop, where another customer was testing a row of perfumes.

  “You seem disappointed to see me,
Vincent,” Calixta observed, narrowing her eyes suspiciously. “What ails you?”

  “Me?” Vincent replied nervously. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  Calixta laughed. “I’ve known you for seven years, Vincent. What is it?”

  “Calixta Cleopatra Morris,” came a low voice from the back of the store. Sophia turned to see the customer who had been examining bottles now facing Calixta, his sword drawn. He had long, curly hair, which he wore tied back with a length of frayed leather. His black boots, shined to perfection, were poised to spring. “I will not call you captain, Calixta,” he hissed, “for you do not deserve the title.”

  “O’Malley,” Calixta said coolly. “It is wonderful to see you, as well. What flea has bitten you that you greet me with a drawn sword? Not advisable under any circumstances, even if this were one of those rare days that happened to find you sober.”

  “You know quite well,” O’Malley said levelly, taking a step toward her.

  Calixta slowly removed her lace gloves and tucked them into the bosom of her dress, all the while eyeing O’Malley with disdain. “Truly, I am at a loss. The last time I saw you, we were dining aboard the Swan, drinking Burr’s best rum. If we’ve run into one another since then and memory fails, do remind me.”

  “This has nothing to do with you and me,” O’Malley said, his mouth twisting as if he had tasted something rancid. “This has to do with what you did to the Eurydice. I only learned of it yesterday, but all of New Orleans is aghast at your crime. Such cruelty cannot stand unanswered.”

  Calixta rested her hand on the hilt of her sword. Her face had lost all traces of amusement. “I commend you on your righteous indignation, O’Malley, but you will have to enlighten me as to its cause. I have not seen the Eurydice in more than three years. What is it I am supposed to have done to it?”

  “Despicable,” O’Malley said, raising his sword. “I never thought you capable of it. You capture the ship, accept their surrender, leave the entire crew to drown—and then deny any knowledge of the atrocity? You have no place at the helm of a ship! I am delighted to be the one who will ensure you never sail again.”

  Calixta drew her sword in a single motion and held O’Malley at bay. Her eyes were angry slits. “Every word you have spoken is a lie. I will gladly defend my honor and the Swan’s, but let us do so in the street. Your clumsy blows are bound to break every one of Vincent’s bottles, and I have no wish to pay for thousands of dollars of spilled perfume when I will already have to foot the bill for your funeral.”

  “Gladly.” O’Malley smiled. “In the street there are sure to be others who will be delighted to see the demise of the once esteemed Captain Morris.”

  There was a sudden movement Sophia could not follow, and the blades flashed and rang between them. Sophia let out an inadvertent gasp.

  “Sophia,” Calixta said quietly, without looking away from O’Malley. She stepped backward toward the shop’s doorway.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you remember the name of the person we came to see?”

  “I do.”

  “I want you to get into the coach and ask the driver to take you there. He will know the address.”

  Sophia took a deep breath and steeled herself. “No.”

  Calixta scowled. “Do as I say.”

  “I will not leave you here.” She glanced through the windows. There were already curious onlookers staring in at the duel. The sound of running feet promised more. “People are coming. If what he says is true, I cannot leave you here.”

  “This is very unhelpful, Sophia,” Calixta said, her eyes still trained on O’Malley.

  “I’m sorry. But I’m not leaving.”

  Calixta’s blade dove forward, and suddenly O’Malley’s shirt hung open. Behind the counter, Vincent let out a yelp and ducked, disappearing from view. O’Malley lunged, his sword slashing viciously, and one of the tables nearest him toppled to the floor with a piercing crash. Calixta threw her sword upward, embedding it in the ceiling, and then hurtled forward, throwing her shoulder into O’Malley’s stomach. He was caught off guard. Still clinging to his sword, he fell backward and struggled to rise, but Calixta had drawn a short dagger from her belt. “Sorry, Finn,” she said quietly. She drew the dagger across the back of his ankles: first one, then the other. O’Malley gasped in pain.

  “They will heal,” she said, rising quickly. “But you will not walk for a pair of weeks.” She tossed her head and looked down at him. “It saddens me that you would believe such a rumor. You know me better.”

  She plucked her sword from where it dangled from the ceiling and sheathed it, then took Sophia by the hand. “Come with me, my insubordinate friend.”

  The crowd outside Vincent’s had grown considerably, and it gave Calixta a wide berth as she fled from the shop. “Into the coach,” Calixta ordered Sophia abruptly. “Drive,” she said to the coachman. “I’ll give you the address once you’ve turned the corner. Make sure no one follows us, and I’ll double the fare.”

  3

  The Armor

  —1892, August 2: 17-Hour 00—

  The Indian Territories are of an Age with New Occident—that is to say, no boundary was formed between them by the Great Disruption. But the political boundary between them was and is formidable. It is a frontier of knowledge as well; historians in New Occident are not as well acquainted as they should be with the peoples of the Territories. We know their history of the last two hundred years, because we were a part of it. But what do we know of the remote past? What do we know of their origins? Very little.

  —From Shadrack Elli’s History of the New World

  THE PORTION OF Pennsylvania where Theo’s company was stationed had no roads to speak of: only overgrown deer trails and a seemingly endless supply of thorny brush. Theo and the others on the work crew had been given the task of transforming those overgrown trails into wide, clear roads that troops could march along unimpeded. Then the dank humidity had begun, with the yellow clouds that made the air heavy and even the slightest movement taxing. The vegetation seemed to thrive in it, unfurling luxuriantly so that weeds cut one day reappeared the next. The work was grueling, and it was made no easier by the prospect of what those roads would be used for. They were clearing the way for the army of New Occident, heading west to bring the rebellious Indian Territories to heel.

  The scarce free moments Theo had were spent on tasks that under normal circumstances would have seemed trivial: eating, bathing, and washing his clothes. At times he felt too tired to eat, but he forced down the food, knowing his muscles would punish him later with terrible cramps if he did not. Somehow he had been able to get through the work and the tasks alike by suspending his thoughts, feeling almost nothing.

  That is, he had been able to do so until the last few days. He had received another letter from Shadrack, full of reassurances and news about life in Boston. Shadrack wrote very little about his work in the ministry, avoiding all mention of Gordon Broadgirdle. The prime minister was a loathsome subject for both of them. He had framed Shadrack for murder; he had engineered a war with the west; and he had cast Theo, who knew all about the man’s sordid past, into the very center of that war. Broadgirdle was present in the letter—in every letter between them—as a great, odious omission. Shadrack reported that Sophia’s whereabouts were still unknown, but he was sure she would return home, and he hoped that the war would soon end and they would all be reunited.

  Reading the letter, Theo was suddenly aware of a dull ache deep inside himself. His entire body slowed and his muscles rebelled. All the chores that had previously been tiring but manageable—even the simplest ones, like cleaning his boots—became detestable and almost impossible. He did not want to be there, in the wilderness, surrounded by his former cell mates, clearing paths so that hundreds of boots could march west. It had always seemed pointless, but now it seemed starkly wrong. What am I d
oing here? Theo wondered.

  He had hoped Shadrack’s letter might reveal some careful hints about a plan to end the war—Shadrack was the War Cartologer, after all, and he was not without power in Broadgirdle’s government. Alternately, Theo had hoped that Shadrack would have a plan to extract him from his company. At the very least, Theo had hoped for some news of Sophia. Knowing she was safely back in Boston would have been some comfort as he headed into danger. But Shadrack offered none of this.

  Theo’s company was only days from the border of the Indian Territories. Soon they would venture past the border and, no doubt, into battle.

  And so Theo was sitting on his cot, wondering what he could possibly write to Shadrack, when his tentmate, a man everyone called Casanova, made his way into the candlelit space and rolled onto his cotton bedding. Casanova understood Theo’s mood at a glance. He lay down quietly on his cot, giving the younger man time to say the first word.

  Casanova, like all the rest of the men in Theo’s company, had once been an inmate of the Boston prisons. Theo had, in fact, met him on his own first day there. The volunteers and recruits, who formed a separate battalion, called the prisoners’ corps “blocks,” a derisive reference to their recent incarceration. In reality, the time in prison made Theo’s company the better prepared for war. The volunteers were inexperienced young men—children, practically; the prisoners were men of all ages who had known their share of misfortune and what it meant to be subject to another man’s will. They did not all conform well to either condition, but their experience made them more cautious and generally more patient toward the indignities of soldiering.

  Casanova was a special case. Tall, with broad shoulders and a thick neck, he had the aspect of a boxer. He had been a handsome man, once. But in some event or accident that he never discussed, one side of his face and head had been burned. Theo had seen him washing, and knew that the scar disfiguring Casanova’s scalp and face extended down across his chest and back: a mottled, pocked, rippled thing. Theo had his own scars, years of accumulated lines and gashes, on his iron-boned right hand. There was something different, Theo felt, about people who wore the damage of the past on their skin. The scar gave Casanova such a terrifying appearance that he maintained a fearsome reputation without any effort. Yet he was anything but terrifying: quietly observant, good-humored, and as kind to Theo as an older brother.