The Glass Sentence (The Mapmakers Trilogy)

by S. E. Grove

  The terrain was dry and flat, with the occasional rocky outgrowth. He did not know how long the weirwind extended or what he would do once he reached the end of it; he only knew that he had to run. Somewhere to the south, Sophia was waiting for him.

  He glanced over his shoulder and saw the boldevela, a dark smudge in the distance. Was it his imagination, or was it larger than it had been a moment before? He turned away, and with his failing strength, ran.

  29

  The Leafless Tree

  1891, June 29: 13-Hour 51

  Metalmind: a derogatory term used in the Baldlands, especially Nochtland, to describe a person whose mind is “made of metal.” The only portion of the human body that can be made of metal, as far as we know, is the skeleton, therefore the term is used not literally but figuratively. To be “metalminded” is to be crass, brutish, violent, or stupid.

  —From Veressa Metl’s Glossary of Baldlandian Terms

  SOPHIA AND THEO had walked for more than two Nochtland hours when Sophia spotted the condemned tree. Had they not been so weary of ducking and dodging every time they sighted a palace guard, they might not even have paused. But they were tired, and the city seemed ominously empty of places to take refuge.

  The tree stood far from the palace and even the city center. At its base was a wooden sign post with a notice nailed to it: CONDEMNED. ROOT ROT. CITY ORDINANCE 437. SCHEDULED FOR DEMOLITION AUGUST 1. The tree had indeed rotted from the roots up, but the massive trunk still supported the broad, bare branches that reached out over the nearby buildings. A few of the wooden steps spiraling up the trunk hung loose; a few more were missing. The house among its high branches looked forlorn with its broken windows and missing shingles. It had clearly been abandoned for some time.

  Sophia and Theo looked at one another. “Do you think it’s safe?” she asked.

  “If we can get up there, it’s safe.” Theo put his foot tentatively on the first step. “I’ll go up first. As long as it still has a floor, we’ll be fine.”

  Sophia watched anxiously as he climbed. She checked to make sure no one was watching, but fortunately they had reached a less trafficked part of the city, and the only sound came from several blocks away. She lost sight of Theo as he followed the spiraling steps on the other side of the trunk.

  “Fine so far,” he called down, waving encouragingly. He climbed the final steps to the tree house and then disappeared within.

  Sophia stared up nervously, losing all sense of how long he had been inside. Finally Theo leaned out through one of the gaping windows. “It’s great! Come on up.”

  Holding on to the rough trunk with both hands, Sophia carefully scaled the spiral staircase. She was too anxious to appreciate the city views unfolding below her.

  “Isn’t this amazing?” were Theo’s first words as she ducked in through the doorway. At first, it was hard to see why. The room was almost empty, apart from a long wooden table and a heavily dented stove with a missing stovepipe. A pair of overturned chairs stood near the staircase to the second floor. But then she saw the windows. Each was a different size and shape, from small squares to enormous diamonds; each offered a magnificent view of Nochtland.

  Sophia looked around in awe. “It’s beautiful. It must have been even more beautiful before the tree rotted.”

  Theo raced to the spiral staircase, and she broke off her reverie to follow him. The second floor had slanted ceilings and round windows. A cracked, floor-length mirror leaned against the wall; a lumpy cotton mattress was folded up beside it. “They even left us a place to sleep!”

  He kicked open the mattress and sat down on it experimentally. Sophia sank down beside him with relief. For a moment she closed her eyes, grateful for the quiet, and breathed deeply; the air was scented with musty wood. She wanted to curl up on the lumpy mattress and forget about the strange, frightening city that lay beyond the wooden walls. She imagined the house as it must have been, with the green leaves of the living tree and bright yellow curtains fluttering in the breeze and a blue desk by the round window—a perfect place for drawing.

  Then, with a sigh, she opened her eyes and looked up at the slanted ceiling. “So what do we need to get into the palace?”

  “Costumes. Nice ones. Fancy costumes, and something to cover our faces.”

  Sophia sat up slowly and opened her pack. “I still have New Occident money,” she said. “We could buy some things.”

  “Show me how much you have.” He held out his uninjured hand for the money. “All right,” he said, after counting it. “You stay here and I’ll go buy us some things for costumes.”

  “What? No—I’m going with you.”

  He shook his head. “If we go together, we’ll be more recognizable. The guards will be looking for two people. And besides, you stick out. I look like I’m from the Baldlands, but you don’t.” Sophia looked at him in consternation. Theo took her hand, and when he spoke again his voice was serious. “You know I’ll come back.”

  “I know,” Sophia said with frustration. “Of course I know. I just don’t want to sit here waiting. What about your hand?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “You can’t even carry anything with it.”

  “Yes, I can. Trust me. It’ll be safer. And easier.”

  She shook her head resignedly. “All right.”

  He got to his feet and stuffed the money into his pocket. “I’d better get going,” he said, looking out through one of the round windows. “It’s late afternoon, and the stores will start closing.”

  “How long do you think it will take?” she asked anxiously, standing up too.

  “Maybe an hour. It may get dark while I’m gone. I’ll try to buy candles,” he added, looking around the bare room. Sophia followed him down the spiral staircase to the first floor and then watched him scurry down the trunk of the tree. “Back soon,” he called up quietly. She watched him go.

  Then she righted the two chairs near the staircase, placing them on either side of the wooden table. Sitting down heavily, she rested her chin in her hand and looked out over the room.

  It was not that she disbelieved Theo—not anymore. She knew he planned to return. But any number of things could happen to prevent him from making his way back to the house in the rotting tree. The guards might see him; someone might ask about his hand and find his answer unsatisfactory; the raider from the market might stumble across him again. She sat, and the sky darkened, the time stretching out interminably. What would happen if Theo did not return? The dusk would turn to night, and the whole city would fall asleep, and she would remain in the tree house, waiting. Then the sky would lighten and the day would arrive, and she would have to venture back into the heart of the city and find a way to get past the guards at Mazapán’s shop. The very thought of it made her stomach sink. And if she could not get through? All of her money was gone. Even if she could leave the city unseen, she would have no way to buy food, and she would have to walk all the long way to Veracruz to seek help from the crew of the Swan. If by some miracle she made it, how would she get back to New Occident? It was nearly July 4; after that, with the borders’ closure and the inevitable lines at each entry point, it would be much harder. What if she ended up outside New Occident’s borders, stranded? I’ll never make it, she thought. I might as well go turn myself in at the palace.

  She checked her watch; Theo had been gone more than two hours. This is stupid, she realized. I’m not making anything better by sitting here agonizing. I need something to do.

  Steeling herself, she opened her pack and took out the maps. She had left the glass map awake, and now she read the maps once, twice, and then a third time. She lingered over the strange apparition that appeared at the end of the memories: a figure holding a shining beacon in its hand as it ran toward her. Each time, it seemed to grow more familiar. I’ll read the maps again, she thought, And this time I’ll know who it is. But nothing changed beyond the unnerving sense of familiarity. Sighing, she put the maps aside. There was
something about them . . . It was almost as if they were meant for her—that their meaning lay within her grasp. But something was still missing.

  Then she opened her notebook, and in the dying light of sunset she drew aimlessly, letting her pencil wander. She found herself tracing the outlines of a familiar face: there was Theo, smiling slyly from the center of the page, almost about to wink. She realized with surprise that it was a fair resemblance. It did not quite capture him, but the likeness was recognizable—far more so than her first attempt after seeing him at the wharf. She flipped back in her sketchbook and compared the two. The haughty boy she had drawn then was entirely unlike the one she had come to know. Ehrlach disguised him with feathers, Sophia thought, and I disguised him with my own idea of what I wanted him to be.

  “Is that me?”

  Sophia turned with a start and saw Theo himself, his arms heavily laden, standing in the semi-darkness. “You’re back!” she exclaimed, flooded with relief. “You frightened me. I didn’t hear you come up.”

  He laughed and dropped the bundles on the table. “I didn’t sneak up on you, honestly. The whole palace guard could have tramped up here and you wouldn’t have heard them.”

  “I’m so glad you’re back.”

  “I took a long time, I’m sorry,” Theo said, and it was clear he meant it. “But look at everything I got.” He rummaged through one of the packages and pulled out a bundle of white candles. He lit one, dripped wax on the wooden table, and planted the candle there.

  “Did anyone see you?”

  “I only saw one guard the whole time, and he didn’t notice me,” Theo said smugly. “I stayed out of the center—got everything in stores farther out. Look at this,” he said, pulling out a sage-green cloth that glimmered as if powdered with gold.

  Sophia gasped. “It’s beautiful—what is it?”

  “A long veil. You can just wear it over your head—I’ll show you. No one will see your face. And I got you this,” he went on, pulling out a pale green gown with slender straps made of vine. “It’s probably a little big, so you can use this to adjust it.” He showed her a small wooden box with an inlaid design and opened it to reveal a packet of bone needles, a tiny pair of scissors fashioned of obsidian and wood, and four diminutive spools of thread.

  “Theo,” Sophia breathed. “These things are so beautiful. Did the money I had really buy all this?”

  “I kept most of the money. We need it for food, anyway.”

  It took her a moment to understand. “You stole these things,” she finally said.

  Theo looked back at her, his dark eyes serious in the feeble light of the candle. “Of course I did. I had to. Why do you think I went alone? The money wouldn’t have bought us more than a couple pairs of socks. Do you want to get into the palace or not?”

  “I should have known.”

  “Come on. I had to steal these things. We weren’t going to get in all dirty, dressed like beggars. There was no choice.”

  “You could have just said so,” she snapped. “You could have just said the money wasn’t enough and you had to go alone because you were going to steal it.”

  “Well, I didn’t lie,” Theo replied heatedly. “I didn’t say the money was enough, and all the reasons I gave for going alone were true. I don’t lie to you.”

  “But if you leave out the truth, it’s the same as lying!”

  “It was just easier not to explain. You would have argued with me, and I needed to get these things before dark. Come on, let me show you the rest of the stuff. It’s great,” Theo said in a placating tone.

  “All right,” Sophia said tightly.

  “This is for me,” he said. He opened a bulky package and drew out a long black velvet cloak. “Plus some new bandages. And, as much as I hate feathers, that’s pretty much all there is for masks. I got these to match, to hide my hand.” He showed her a mask covered with brilliant blue plumage, and the gauntlets that would conceal the cotton gauze.

  “It’s all perfect,” Sophia said dispiritedly. “Everything you got.”

  Theo sat and looked at her across the table. “Don’t be mad.”

  “I just don’t understand why you have to lie about everything.”

  “It’s just—I don’t know. It’s so much easier than explaining every little thing.” He turned the mask over in his hands.

  “But you lie about things that aren’t little. Like what happened to your parents.”

  “Well, yeah. I don’t like being pinned down.”

  “Pinned down?”

  “You know what I mean. If you tell someone everything, it’s like putting yourself right in their hands. If you lie, you keep the options open—nobody ever has the whole picture of you.”

  Sophia shook her head. “So you never tell the truth?”

  “No, I do. I tell you the truth.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Sometimes.”

  “I do,” Theo insisted. “About the important things, I do.”

  “Why? What’s the difference?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know—with you I don’t mind.”

  She looked at the flickering candle. “You didn’t tell me why you couldn’t go into Nochtland.”

  “I should have, I know. But you could have asked me. You can ask me anything.”

  “All right,” Sophia said. “Tell me about your hand. How did you find out about the Mark of Iron? You told Calixta you hurt it when your house fell apart. I’m guessing that’s not true.”

  Theo turned so that he was facing the pile of clothes on the table. “Sure, I’ll tell you the truth about it,” he said, grinning. “But first, let’s eat.” He produced a loaf of bread, a bottle of milk, and a basket of figs. “I actually paid for these.”

  Sophia smiled. “Thanks. That makes it taste a lot better.”

  He lit another candle and pushed the clothing aside. Sophia had once again forgotten how much time had passed since her last meal, and the two of them fell on the bread and figs, washing it all down with milk from the glass bottle.

  Theo wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as she settled in her chair. “Okay. First, you’ve got to understand that outside of the Triple Eras, especially in the northern Baldlands, it’s no big deal to have the Mark of Iron. There are raiders who even say they’ve got more iron than they actually do—that’s how proud of it they are. Course, that can get you into trouble. I knew a raider named Ballast who claimed every bone in his body was made of iron. Well, you can imagine there were one or two other raiders who were happy to prove him wrong.” He chuckled. “Dangerous to boast about something like that.

  “When I was still in Sue’s gang—I couldn’t have been more than five—we stopped in a town called Mercury where almost everyone had the Mark. The town doctor had a magnet as big as a window that he used to figure out who had what made of iron. He wasn’t going to cut into someone—do surgery—before he knew what was iron and what wasn’t.”

  Sophia leaned forward. “I can’t believe it’s so common there.”

  Theo nodded. “Oh, yeah. Real common. But the doctor wasn’t. He was one of our customers, that’s how Sue knew about him. It was one of her books that gave him the magnet idea in the first place.”

  “She had books?” Sophia had difficulty imagining books among raiders and gangs.

  “That’s mostly how she supported us. See, it’s not like New Occident, where all the books are from your time or before. In the Baldlands, there’s books from every year you could think of. Every ‘era,’ like they used to say before the Disruption. Sue was a book peddler—we’d buy books in one town, then sell them in the next, buy more, move on.”

  Sophia bit her lip. “There must have been wonderful books.”

  “Yeah, there were. That’s how I learned to read. There’s all kinds of things you can get from books. How do you think I learned about maps?” He raised his eyebrows. “Well, the doctor bought a book from who-knows-when that talked about iron bones and magnets. He owed Sue a favor or two. I
guess she’d already noticed things about my hand—she didn’t say, but maybe she’d noticed it was stronger than the other one. She paid the doctor a whole dollar to have me checked for the Mark of Iron. Just so I’d know. She took that good care of me.” He played with a crust of bread. “So he did, found my hand had the Mark.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Nope. Just my hand. Sue lectured me then; told me I shouldn’t boast about having the Mark because it would get me into trouble, and I had to be careful who knew, because in some parts people thought badly of it.” Theo shook his head. “Well, it wasn’t long before I was ignoring Sue’s advice. I let it get to my head that I had the Mark, and I started using my hand for all kinds of stupid stunts. Though the first scar was for a good cause.” He showed her the edge of his hand. “One of the kids had fallen into a crevice and I kept him from falling by pulling him up by his bootlace. Cut clean through the skin, but the iron bones held.” He laughed. “After that, the reasons weren’t always as good.”

  “So what you said to Calixta never happened?”

  “Nah, course not. I told you—I never knew my parents. But I wasn’t going to tell her about the Mark, was I? No way to know what she’d think of it. It’s what I’m saying—best not to get pinned down by telling the truth.”

  “I guess I see what you mean,” Sophia allowed. It was clear now that Theo didn’t intend any harm with his innumerable small lies. She could see how there were sometimes occasions when it was useful, but she couldn’t imagine them. And then she could. Right now, she realized with surprise, we’re going to lie to get into the palace. We’re going to lie about who we are. And I don’t care.

  Sophia found herself looking across the table at her open notebook, the drawing of Theo dressed in feathers.

  As if reading her thoughts, he asked, “So you never said. Is that drawing of me?”

  She blushed, grateful for the darkness in the little tree house. “It is.”

  “You have a good memory—that’s exactly what the costume looked like.”