The Crimson Skew (The Mapmakers Trilogy) by S. E. Grove (6)

5

Maxine’s Dovecote

SOPHIA AND CALIXTA arrived at Maxine Bisset’s door only minutes after Burr, Goldenrod, and Errol. “I knew you would come at once,” she said. “Get in off the street.”

“I must ride to the harbor and warn the crew,” Calixta said.

Maxine shook her head. “Too late. My rider has just returned. The Swan was spotted and had to pull anchor or risk being torn to pieces. It is long gone.”

Calixta stared at her, aghast.

“Come in, child!” Maxine insisted. “This is no place to discuss these things.”

Silent for once, Calixta paid the coachman and followed Sophia through the doorway. “You must be Sophia,” Maxine said warmly, taking her hand and pressing it.

“Sophia Tims. Nice to meet you.”

“And you.” The fortune-teller smiled. “Don’t let the circumstances alarm you. I hope you will feel at home here—I am delighted you’ve come.” She was a woman of some fifty years, her springy brown hair streaked with gray, threaded with beads, and piled into a soft and ornate mound atop her round face. Her complexion was like Sophia’s; her smile appeared easily and often; her hands had the sturdiness that comes from long years at a stove or a washboard. Her eyes twinkled with kindness, intelligence, and something else—perhaps a nostalgia she had tried to mask with cheerfulness, or a curiosity about the dark corners of the human soul.

Sophia liked her instantly. “Thank you. What is this all about?”

“We will discuss it in due time,” Maxine reassured her, leading her down the corridor and glancing back at Calixta, who followed them. “The long and short of it is this: someone has spread a nasty rumor about the Morrises. The lie is intended to provoke them, and it is difficult to ignore.”

It was, Sophia reflected, a well-calculated lie—sure to tarnish their name, but impossible for them to address while in hiding. “A man named Finn O’Malley just attacked Calixta in a shop.” The pirate did not say a word.

“I’m not surprised. They are in grave danger,” Maxine said soberly. “You are safe here, but we must plan very carefully.” The open corridor they walked along bordered a patio lush with plants. Brightly colored birds perched at the edge of a stone fountain. Dark rooms with shuttered windows led off the corridor, the air coming from them cool and damp. “We are gathered in the dining room,” Maxine explained, “because it has the largest table. And,” she added, “because Burr has a terrible weakness for my cook’s pastries.” She gave Sophia a broad wink. “You will soon discover why.”

Burr, Wren, Errol, and Goldenrod were assembled in the dining room. Half a dozen tiered plates filled with tiny cakes and pastries were arranged on the long dining table. Above it, a massive chandelier hung ponderously, its pendants winking in the occasional sunlight from the patio. The room was both luxurious and worn, as if some things about it had been used so much they had become too dear to part with. A set of dining chairs in perfect condition lined one wall, but many of the seats at the table were faded armchairs with mismatched upholstery. Maxine settled into one of these comfortably and gestured for her guests to do the same. “Please, my friends. Don’t offend Celia. Start with the pastries. Tea and coffee will be here at any moment.”

“Are you all right?” Burr asked Calixta, his voice serious.

Calixta put her arms around him. “I’m perfectly fine, thank you. But I’m worried about the Swan.”

“They have orders to return to Hispaniola should anything like this occur,” her brother reminded her. “They will be fine.”

“And you will be perfectly fine, too.” Maxine passed Sophia a small plate with a pink piece of cake.

“This is not what we had planned,” Calixta said, taking a seat beside Maxine.

“And what, exactly, was it that you had planned? What brings you all here? I have divined some of it, but not all.”

Calixta glanced at Sophia. “They are all here to help me,” Sophia said ruefully, “and I am so sorry for the incredible complications it has caused for everyone.”

“Nonsense,” Burr said, sounding more like himself. “Wren you cannot pity, for his entire existence is a complication. And you know quite well how Calixta and I enjoy complications. Enjoy? No—such a pallid word. Love. Adore. They fill us with delight. What are complications but unsolicited fun? Errol and Goldenrod . . .” He reached to fill his plate with pastries, and at the same time he gave the pair a skeptical look. “Well, you can see that they do not know the meaning of fun. Complications or no, it is all the same to them.”

Sophia smiled despite herself as she ate the pink pastry. Errol and Goldenrod, well accustomed to Burr’s sense of humor by now, blithely ignored the comment. “No complication is too great, miting,” Errol said, “as you well know.”

“And I am grateful for it,” Sophia replied. “As you see,” she continued to Maxine, “fun-loving or otherwise, they are all here to help me. I am looking for my parents, who went missing eleven years ago. Wren met them as they were sailing to Seville, and then they disappeared. We’ve learned now that while in the Papal States”—she paused, looking down at her lap—“they were transformed.”

Maxine eyed her keenly, that other quality beyond the intelligence and kindness bubbling to the surface. “What do you mean, transformed?”

“They became Lachrima.” Avoiding Maxine’s eyes, Sophia reached into her skirt pocket and drew out a roll of paper. “In the Papal States, we traveled to a place known as Ausentinia—a place that gives travelers maps to anything and everything they have lost.” Maxine’s gaze sharpened even more. “Along with a purse full of garnets, I was given a map to find my parents. And they”—she indicated Errol and Goldenrod, Wren, Calixta and Burr—“have all been helping me follow it.”

“Is that the map?” Maxine asked, pointing to the roll of paper.

“Yes.”

“Can I see it?”

Sophia handed it across. Her eyes wide with excitement, Maxine read the map aloud.

“Missing but not lost, absent but not gone, unseen but not unheard. Find us while we still draw breath.

“Leave my last words in the Castle of Verity; they will reach you by another route. When you return to the City of Privation, the man who keeps time by two clocks and follows a third will wait for you. Take the offered sail, and do not regret those you leave behind, for the falconer and the hand that blooms will go with you. Though the route may be long, they will lead you to the ones who weather time. A pair of pistols and a sword will prove fair company.

“Set your sights on the frozen sea. In the City of Stolen Senses, you will lose your companions. Remember that though in your brief life you have met Grief, confronting it alone, you have not yet met Fear. It dwells in the west, a companion on every path, a presence in every doorway.

“You will meet the wanderer who is sweet and bitter, and you will travel together, your fates bound on each step of the journey. Trust this companion, though the trust would seem misplaced. You will travel to the Forest of Truces, where the silent bell rings and the dormant seed grows. From then on, the map you follow must be your own. Find it in the lines you have drawn, the paths made by your past. The old one remembers more than anyone.”

Maxine turned it over and brushed her fingers over the illustrated map—the nebulous lines that led from the City of Privation to the Frozen Sea, the City of Stolen Senses, and the Forest of Truces. “Beautiful,” she sighed.

“Beautiful perhaps, but damned difficult to follow,” Burr said pleasantly. He followed the statement with four pastries, eaten in quick succession.

“This is a divining map,” Maxine declared, ignoring him.

“We have found,” Goldenrod put in, “that the map is difficult to interpret but invariably accurate. Most of what is described in the first two paragraphs has already taken place. I am the hand that blooms; Errol is the falconer. Calixta and Burr are the sword and the pair of pistols, naturally. And we have taken our direction from its line about the frozen sea, which we understand to be the Eerie Sea.”

“Oh!” Calixta exclaimed. She reached out for Sophia’s hand. “Now I see why you wouldn’t leave me at Victor’s. I’m sorry—I’d forgotten.”

“In the City of Stolen Senses, you will lose your companions,” Sophia repeated. “Yes,” she said, her brow furrowed with worry. “It is bound to happen. But if there were some way to anticipate it, we might, well . . . not avoid it, but make the same meaning less awful. Where is the City of Stolen Senses? Could we figure out where it is? If we could, would we be able to do something so that losing is just ‘losing track’ and not—not something worse?”

Maxine considered this. “So you believe it is possible to fulfill the meaning of the map in various ways, and that you can choose how to fulfill the meaning.”

“Exactly,” Sophia said, grateful that Maxine—unlike her travel companions, whom she had been trying to persuade for weeks—understood this so quickly.

“It is an astounding piece of divination,” the woman said, returning the map to Sophia. “And my own view on such things is like yours—prophecies are loose, not rigid. They can be remarkably protean, so that a single prediction may fit many circumstances. Perhaps Calixta and Burr have told you that I am something of a diviner myself?”

Calixta’s face was a picture of politeness as she put her teacup down. “We did, Maxine dear, but really we are here for the pigeons.” She hurried on: “Sophia’s uncle is Shadrack Elli, the cartologer. He has had no news of her since she sailed for the Papal States. We wish to send him word that Sophia is safe, in our care, and that she is heading north.”

Maxine nodded. “Of course, I see. So we must send a pigeon to Boston.”

“And ideally, we would ask him to send a reply to a location farther north. How far in that direction does your network extend?”

Maxine waved her hand dismissively. “As far as you like. My pigeons fly to the Eerie Sea, to the western coast, and to the new border of the Glacine Age to the south.”

“Perhaps,” Goldenrod ventured, “I might suggest we aim for Salt Lick.”

“One of my depots is in Salt Lick,” Maxine replied, “so that would work quite well. Would you like to see the pigeons?” she asked Sophia.

Sophia pushed her empty plate to one side. “Very much. I had heard pigeons could carry messages, but I have never seen any who do.”

“You may be disappointed,” Maxine said with a smile. “They look just like ordinary pigeons. But their feats of stamina are quite extraordinary. And they are remarkable in another way, too. These are iron pigeons.”

“Pigeons made of iron? How do they fly?” Sophia wondered.

Maxine rose from the table. “Pigeons with the Mark of Iron.”

“Oh!” Sophia exclaimed.

“Come with me to the dovecote, and we’ll dispatch your message to Shadrack right away.”

“Could I come as well?” Goldenrod asked.

Seneca shifted on Errol’s shoulder, dancing from one clawed foot to the other. “Oh, no, my friend,” Errol said to him firmly. “You and I are staying here.”

Maxine led them toward the kitchen—a long room with several worktables and multiple ovens, where the cook and two assistants were toiling in the aftermath of the afternoon pastry production—and then out into a second garden patio. Beneath the heavy yellow clouds, insects buzzed in slow circles while a hummingbird dipped and darted. Herbs grew in dense clusters at the edges of the garden: lavender and thyme, sage and mint.

A stone walkway wove through the herbs to an ornate iron stair. The narrow grillwork steps led to a low-ceilinged room, musty and close with the murmuring of pigeons. A long window with no glass or screen looked out onto the patio and, beyond it, the city of New Orleans. The pigeons were free to fly in and out. Nestled in narrow wooden shelves lined with straw, they fluttered and shifted, eyeing Maxine and the visitors dispassionately.

“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.”