The Crimson Skew

by S. E. Grove

  “Here we are,” she said, “with the most well-traveled pigeons in the western world.”

  Goldenrod knelt by one of the shelves and extended her pale-green fingers toward the pigeons who warbled happily, inching toward her.

  “I see you have a way with them,” Maxine said approvingly.

  Goldenrod beamed up at her. “They seem very happy here.”

  Sophia noted Maxine’s startled reaction with a smile. Calixta and Burr were so flamboyant, so extravagantly beautiful, that they filled the room and dazzled onlookers wherever they were. Beside them, Errol and Goldenrod seemed like dusty little sparrows in the company of peacocks. But the two had a radiance of their own, and Maxine was seeing it now.

  “I hope they are,” she replied. “We try to take good care of them.” She opened a cupboard in the wall and took out a slip of paper, a pen, and a small piece of Goodyear rubber. “What shall we say to your uncle, then, Sophia?”

  “How many words do we have?”

  “Tell me your message, and I’ll abbreviate.”

  “Let him know that I’m safe with Calixta and Burr and here in New Orleans. We are heading north to Salt Lick and hope to be there . . .” She looked questioningly at Goldenrod.

  “The train would be fastest. But Calixta and Burr might be recognized. We shall have to see. Two days would be the soonest. Ten days at the latest, if we cannot take the train.”

  “I have already thought of a solution for Calixta and Burr,” Maxine said, looking pleased with herself, “so do not worry on that account. I will let him know the time frame.” She wrote quickly on the slip of paper, rolled it expertly within the rubber, and wound a string tightly around the bundle. “Now,” she said, turning to the pigeons. “Where is Marcel? He is my most reliable courier, and he will brave his way through this horrid air we’ve had of late.” She petted the pigeons gently with the tips of her fingers, pushing one or another aside. “Marcel, little heart, where are you hiding? Ah!” she exclaimed, drawing a gray pigeon toward her. He was cupped in the palm of her hand, his feet between her fingers. “Here you are, my brave bird.” She kissed the top of his head and slipped the little roll of rubber into a slender tube attached to his leg. Murmuring quietly to Marcel, she went to the open window and then let him go, releasing him into the air. The bank of yellow clouds that blanketed the city rumbled ominously, but Marcel flew steadily and swiftly northeast, staying low to avoid them.

  She watched him depart, smiling with pride. “There he goes.”

  “Will he be all right with the storm?” Sophia asked anxiously.

  “I doubt there will be a storm,” Maxine said, gesturing to a weather glass that hung just inside the broad window. “These clouds roll and rumble and the pressure rises and falls, but for weeks we have not had a drop of rain. It is passing strange. Still, my pigeons have had no difficulties with it.” Turning to tidy and close the writing cupboard, she said, “The Mark of Iron is what guides them. You can tell an ordinary pigeon where to go, and it would understand you, but it wouldn’t know how to get there. But pigeons with the Mark can locate anyone, anywhere. In a busy city, in a crowded courtyard, on a remote island. It is all the same to them.”

  “But how do they do it?” Sophia asked. “How does the Mark of Iron make a difference?”

  “It guides them like a compass, my dear!”

  “Oh!” Sophia said, understanding dawning.

  “In this case, we have depots, so Marcel’s task is easier. He will fly to the depot in Greensboro, where my colleague Elmer will transfer his message to another pigeon and send it to Boston. When it arrives there, Percy, the head of the Boston depot, will take down the message and send it to Shadrack by regular messenger. The whole thing will take a little over a day and a half.”

  “Thank you so much, Maxine,” Sophia said gratefully.

  “I would imagine that for many people these days yours is the only correspondence that crosses the lines of battle,” Goldenrod remarked.

  “Indeed,” Maxine said, looking out at the city. “All regular mail has ground to a halt. To be a human courier is very dangerous these days. But I am sure Marcel will have no problem. Now,” she added, heading back to the stairs, “let us return to the dining room, and I will tell you my idea for how Burr and Calixta might travel safely out of New Orleans.” There was a wicked gleam in her eye. “It is an excellent idea, and I think no one is going to like it.”

  6

  Morel and Violets

  —1892, August 6: 13-Hour 07—

  Moreover, researchers (such as Veressa Metl) have suggested that the Marks should be thought of as a spectrum. My observations of the Elodeans, known as the Eerie in New Occident, indicate that they bear more of the Mark of the Vine than people in the southern Baldlands. Could it also be that the spectrum, as Metl describes it, corresponds to geography? And could it be, then, that there is also a spectrum for the Mark of Iron, resulting in some places with people and animals more “marked” than others?

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

  “RAIDERS?” CALIXTA EXCLAIMED. “Have you seen what raiders wear? Their clothes are invariably in tatters. Not one knows the meaning of ‘clean hair.’ And I have yet to see a raider who understands the fundamentals of footwear fashion.”

  “I knew you would hate the idea,” Maxine said, looking rather pleased. “It’s precisely because you do hate it and because everyone knows you would never be caught dead wearing ragged clothes that dressing as a raider would be ideal. No one would suspect you of wearing such a disguise.”

  Calixta scowled. Burr, Wren, Errol, and Goldenrod were absorbing the proposal with rather more success.

  “These raiders,” Errol asked, “parts of their body are made of iron?”

  “In the Baldlands,” Goldenrod explained, “people like me are said to have the Mark of the Vine—for the parts of me that resemble a plant. So there are also people who, instead of plant, have parts made of metal. Often iron. And many of them are raiders.”

  “Not all of them,” Sophia put in. “My friend Theo isn’t a raider, but he has bones in one hand made of iron. I like your idea,” she told Maxine.

  “Wren is unrecognizable with his tattoos,” Calixta pointed out. “Why don’t we all disguise ourselves in the same way?”

  “A band of tattooed smugglers from the Indies would draw attention on a train in the Territories,” Maxine said. “But raiders are so common there that no one would spare you a glance.”

  “You and Burr could stay here,” Sophia offered. “I know the Swan has sailed, but you don’t have to go north. That wasn’t part of the plan.”

  “Of course we will go north with you,” Calixta grumbled. “I certainly won’t stay cooped up like one of Maxine’s pigeons while all of you are merrily rolling into a war zone.”

  “The other concern,” Wren said, “is that the League may have devised additional traps for us. I had not anticipated that they would set a reward for me, much less spread rumors about you and Burr. I am afraid they are proving far more intent on my recapture than I had expected. This being so, they might well have set further obstacles in our path.”

  “It’s decided, then,” Burr said, clapping his hands. “We travel north as raiders. Maxine, what do you have for us by way of disguises?”

  She smiled, not a little smugly. “I have everything you might possibly want—and more.”

  They began the transformation in a long room on the ground floor. In the center were tables stacked with boxes, burlap bags, and hay, and the walls were lined with shelves and wardrobes. All manner of strange objects filled them: a plaster statue of a winged horse; the wooden head of a cruelly grinning bearded giant; a stuffed beaver with beady glass eyes. Sophia shuddered inadvertently. “Maxine’s house is a smuggler’s treasure chest,” Burr said, smiling reassuringly. “Sneaking a few pirat
es out of New Orleans is nothing compared to what she’s already done.”

  “I appreciate the compliment, but I believe,” Maxine said, opening one of the wardrobes, “my feats will never match those of my great-grandmother, who smuggled slaves out of New Orleans.”

  Sophia’s eyes opened wide. “She did?”

  “Two hundred and seventy-three of them, over the course of her lifetime. She smuggled all of them to freedom in the north and west, long before the revolt and the formation of New Akan. I come from a long line of smugglers,” she said proudly.

  Burr helped her pull several crates from the wardrobe; they tinkled tellingly as he set them on one of the tables.

  “Ugh, the bells,” Calixta complained. “I had forgotten that in addition to being unwashed and unfashionable, we also have to jangle about like human tambourines.”

  “Stop your protests,” Burr scolded. “It is most unseemly for a pirate who has built a sizable fortune out of almost nothing and sailed to half a dozen Ages, all the while cheerfully breaking hearts in every port as if they were made of the flimsiest glass. And leaving me, often enough, to pick up the crushed and rather sharp pieces,” he added wryly. “I issue you a challenge: Is it possible to be a comely raider? I propose that it is impossible. Even you, dear sister, cannot transform the raider into an alluring creature.”

  Calixta narrowed her eyes. “Very well. I accept your challenge. I submit to you that I will be the most irresistible raider ever to jingle-jangle a worn boot through the Territories.”

  “Bravo!” cried her brother. “Bravely put!”

  Wren and Errol exchanged a brief smile.

  “There are silver teeth here!” Sophia exclaimed, drawing open a small wooden box lined with velvet.

  “Several sets, my dear,” Maxine said. “You will have no trouble at all disappearing into your costumes.”

  • • •

  THE AFTERNOON WAS spent assembling their disguises, and the early evening was spent enjoying more of Celia’s cooking. Sophia almost forgot that, beyond the walls of Maxine’s house, a suspicious city—and the League—was waiting for them.

  She was reminded of it as the evening drew to a close and the travelers rose to find their beds. Maxine approached with a gleam in her eye. “Sophia, dear, would you like me to tell your fortune?”

  “Oh, you’ll frighten her out of her senses, Maxine,” Burr objected, before Sophia could reply.

  “Nonsense,” Calixta protested. “Sophia frightens less easily than most pirates in the Indies.”

  “You must not remember the first time Maxine told your fortune. You were so pale I thought you would faint. All the sun in Hispaniola would not have—”

  “Ridiculous!” Calixta exclaimed. “Me? Frightened of fortune-telling? Besides, Sophia is well used to mysterious prognostications, thanks to those nonsensical Ausentinian maps.”

  Goldenrod and Errol looked meaningly at Sophia, and she gave them a slight smile. Unchecked, the pirates would make every decision for everyone. “I wouldn’t mind having my fortune told, Maxine,” Sophia said. “Though I don’t believe in the Fates.”

  “This has nothing to do with the Fates,” Maxine told her. “It’s a much older power—you shall see.”

  “I’ll be awake, Sophia,” Goldenrod said gently. “Whenever you are done.”

  Sophia gave her a nod of thanks as Maxine led her out of the drawing room and toward the back of the house, near the kitchen. There, in a room that Sophia had not yet seen, Maxine began to light candles in the darkness. Slowly, the contours of the space appeared: a round table of smooth, white marble stood at the center of the room. Tall candles encircled the table, leaving only a narrow passage in and out. Dark drapes covered all the windows. An armoire—tall, of pale wood with scrollwork—stood closed, hunkering in the corner of the room. “Wait here for me a little while, Sophia,” Maxine said, disappearing by another door that led in the direction of the kitchen.

  As she stood by the table, Sophia listened to the sounds of the house. It had been a long time since she had been alone, and in silence. She heard Calixta and Burr still bantering somewhere down the corridor. She heard the quiet noises of Maxine in the kitchen, opening and closing cabinets. In the background, she heard the murmuring of the pigeons in the dovecote. And beyond all of this, she heard the distant noises of the city: cries and calls; the clatter of hooves on cobblestone; a sudden muffled burst of laughter. There was something else, too—a remote roar or rumble, like the wind or the ocean.

  Sophia closed her eyes. She lost track of time as she stood there, trying to place the strange sound. It was the clouds, she realized: the yellow clouds that sat upon the city and refused to yield rain. Even inside Maxine’s house, buttressed by the thick walls, the air felt dank, heavy, and somehow foreboding. Why? Sophia wondered. With her eyes closed, she explored the question, listening to the distant rumble as if trying to hear words within it.

  A nearer sound disturbed her thoughts, and Sophia opened her eyes, startled, to see Maxine returning. The first thing she noticed was that her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and more of the room was revealed. The walls were covered with dark drawings: lines and spirals and faces that seemed to describe a specific shape, only to alter and become something different. It’s a tattooed room, she thought, like Wren’s arms.

  Maxine was holding a silver pitcher and a platter. She wore a black veil that covered her entire person, leaving only her hands free. Placing the pitcher on the table, she gestured to the armoire in the corner of the room. She opened its doors, revealing a darkened interior of shelves filled with objects. Sophia approached the armoire and peered into its depths, trying to make out its contents. “Choose as many as you’d like,” Maxine said, her voice slightly muffled by her veil. She held the platter before her, waiting.

  There were four shelves, all of them piled high. Sophia wanted to protest that she could not see, but she realized that perhaps this was partly the point. A pale shape like a moon at the back of the middle shelf drew her eye, and she took it out. It was a circle of wood, smooth and flat, that seemed cut horizontally from a tree. She placed it on the platter Maxine was holding. Something on the lower shelf winked in the candlelight, and Sophia reached for it: a silver chain.

  Her eyes had gotten used to the deeper darkness, and she saw more clearly what the armoire contained. It looked like wreckage: the contents of an abandoned attic; the dregs of a shipwreck; the bits and pieces at the bottom of an old trunk. And yet, here and there some things intrigued her. She picked them up and set them one by one on the platter: a broken piece of glass, a horseshoe, a smooth brown shape that might have been wood or amber, a white shell, a velvet ribbon, an old key, and the porcelain arm of a doll.

  Without meeting Sophia’s eye, Maxine walked back to the table. Slowly, she placed the objects from the platter on the table, creating a perimeter. Making her way back to where Sophia stood, she put the empty plate aside, then reached beneath the veil and produced a pair of silver scissors. Sophia flinched as the fortune-teller’s veiled figure leaned toward her. Without a word, Maxine cut a strand of hair from Sophia’s head and dropped it into the silver pitcher.

  “Morel for honesty, violets for sight. Truth in tresses and payment in blood.” She stabbed her forefinger quickly against the scissors, letting a slow drop of blood fall into the pitcher. She tucked the scissors away, then swirled the pitcher high over her head. Drawing it down toward the table, Maxine had to pull as if tugging it out of the hands of some invisible being. The pitcher jolted slightly as it came free. Sophia heard Maxine let out her breath.

  Then Maxine emptied its contents onto the table.

  Sophia gasped. The liquid was viscous and dark, almost black against the marble. Instead of pooling where Maxine poured it, the substance spread outward, stopping just at the edges of the table. A thick trunk channeled across the surface and then fanned out into bra
nches, which split into even thinner branches. The pitcher poured far more than it seemed to contain, and when the last drop had fallen, a black shape like a tree filled the white stone. The branches reached out toward the objects Maxine had placed at the perimeter, making it seem as if each was a piece of unusual fruit on this most unusual tree.

  “Ah, here we are,” Maxine whispered, walking around the table appraisingly, admiring each branch of the black tree. “Yes, yes—I can see,” she continued, following the dark limbs with a pointing fingertip as if reading a text spread across the table. “I would never have thought . . .” she trailed off. “Astonishing. Not impossible, but astonishing.” Again, she circled the table slowly, commenting under her breath until she had reached Sophia at the roots of the tree.

  Without removing the veil, she looked up and finally seemed to meet Sophia’s eyes. “Your fortune lies told before you,” she said quietly. “Not one fortune, but several. The objects at the edges are all pieces of a life you may live. Some will prove meaningless. Others will prove essential. Just as the tree suggests many fortunes, so the objects pertain to many possible lives.

  “The main trunk of the tree is unavoidable—the path you will certainly take. But the branches are all uncertain. You might take this one,” she gestured, “or that one,” she pointed to another. “These possible paths are so numerous that it would take a lifetime—your lifetime—to describe them. I will describe only those that are most dangerous, most probable, or most important.”

  Sophia did not speak. She waited, an unexpected tenseness coiled in her stomach. The Fates no longer meant anything to her, and she had stopped believing that the world was ordered by some greater power. Yet she found herself watching Maxine’s movements with hopefulness and dread, as if this would actually determine her fortune.