The Crimson Skew (The Mapmakers Trilogy) by S. E. Grove (7)

6

Morel and Violets

“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 pirates 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 branches, 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.

“This is one path you might take,” Maxine said, indicating the lowest branch of the tree. It ended at the horseshoe. “It is a dangerous path. Along it, you seek vengeance for a friend you have loved. The vengeance takes you into darkness, into a world of terrible deeds. By the end of this path, some of those deeds are your own.”

Sophia nodded wordlessly as Maxine looked to her for acknowledgment.

“This path is less likely, but you will find it alluring,” she went on, pointing to a higher branch that led to the broken piece of glass. “It is the path of knowledge. Along it, you will become the greatest cartologer of the known world. Your uncle’s mantle will pass to you. But along with knowledge comes peril. This form of knowledge, while pure in itself, attracts the attention of those who would misuse it. You find yourself a fugitive, an exile, and your knowledge becomes a great burden.”

Again, she looked up at Sophia, who nodded once more. The knot in her stomach was tightening. Were none of these possible futures happy ones?

“Now, this path,” Maxine continued, gesturing to the path that ended in the velvet ribbon, “is safer. It is the path of prosperity. There is happiness, though there is less knowledge. Your cartology fades into the background, and your life becomes firmly anchored in the material world. Exploration and profit. Treasure and adventure. This path holds only trivial dangers and many pleasures. But I see a vein of discontent pulsing through the pleasure: a sense of being dissatisfied. Be forewarned—this path will bring you happiness, but it may not bring you fulfillment.

“And then there is this path,” Maxine concluded, waving her arm over a broad branch that led to the tree ring and the small, brown shape. “I am mystified by this path, for parts of it are obscured to me. It seems dangerous, but I cannot tell you what the dangers are. It seems fulfilling, but I cannot describe the forms of fulfillment. What I see is a pattern: losses followed by discoveries; grief followed by intense joy; bewilderment followed by a font of certain knowledge. This is a complex path.”

“How will I know?” Sophia finally asked. “How will I know which path I am on? And do I have a choice?”

“There are choices everywhere,” Maxine replied, waving her arm over the table. “They begin here. Which path of these do you wish to take? I will tell you how to find it.”

Vengeance, knowledge, prosperity, or uncertainty. Sophia could see, even with such brief descriptions, that all but the first path had both good and bad things about them. Knowledge was important, Sophia reflected, but it would count for very little if she had to spend her life running from others who sought it. Prosperity was pleasurable, but she had already seen what a life of prosperity looked like: Miles, Calixta, and Burr had followed that path. There was a certain carelessness to their lives that Sophia found appealing but somehow . . . deflating.

“I would follow the last path,” Sophia said aloud. “Though there are uncertainties, the pattern you describe is one I think I could live with. One I think I would like. I am used to loss and I am used to finding things in the wake of that loss. This seems the right path for me.”

Maxine nodded gravely, almost bowing as she let her head fall forward. As she rose, she took the tree ring and the brown shape in her hands. “Then let me tell you how to find this path. There are three things to remember—three crucial junctures. One will happen very soon. The other two will not happen for quite some time. Are you ready to hear them?”

Sophia swallowed. “Yes.”

“First. When you see the knight and the dragon, you must think only of your own safety. Your instinct is to stay. You must flee.”

“A knight and a dragon?”

“That is what I see—I can only imagine that they are symbols.”

“How will I recognize them?”

Maxine smiled under the veil. “You will recognize them. Second, you will learn something that causes you to doubt the honesty of someone you love. When this happens, you will be wise to look beyond reason for your judgment.”

“What do you mean, beyond reason?”

“Reason and rationality alone cannot decide this for you. Listen to the part of you that judges the world on feeling.”

“Very well.”

“Third. Something will change the ground beneath your feet. What was natural will become unnatural. Dust will change to water. Water will change to dust. You will feel fear. You must overcome this fear—your accumulated knowledge has the answer.”

“So I must ignore my instincts, my reason, and my feelings in succession,” Sophia said, disheartened.

Maxine’s voice was steady and encouraging. “It is not a matter of ignoring them, but of knowing when to trust which part of yourself. In the first case, put your instinct aside and trust the virtue of self-preservation. In the second case, put your reason aside and trust the virtue of affection. In the third case, put your feelings aside and trust the virtue of knowledge. You have all these things—instinct, reason, sentiment, and knowledge. This telling of your fortune only counsels you when to heed each.”

Sophia nodded slowly. “I understand.”

“Take these,” Maxine said, holding out the tree ring and the brown shape. “They hold the keys to your path. They are first steps to launch you upon it.”

Sophia took the two objects and looked at them in the half darkness, mystified.

Maxine smiled reassuringly. “And now you may help me extinguish the candles. The fortune-telling is done.”

• • •

SOPHIA RETURNED TO her room feeling unsettled. She had accepted Maxine’s offer thinking that it would be amusing—like having one’s cards read at a fair. But Maxine had seemed so solemn, her vision of the future so true, that Sophia found herself shaken.

The little bedroom was lit with lamps. Dark violet curtains had been drawn shut, and the bed with its violet-trimmed bedding had been turned down. Sophia placed the two objects Maxine had given her on a spindly little table by the side of the bed and stared at them in the flickering light of the flame lamp.

There was a light knock on her door. “Come in,” Sophia called. She knew already that it would be Goldenrod, and she turned expectantly.

Goldenrod made her way in quietly, shutting the door behind her. “You are upset,” she said, coming to stand by Sophia. She wore an embroidered nightdress that fell to her bare green feet—clearly borrowed from Maxine’s closet.

“I didn’t know the fortune-telling would feel so . . . real.”

“Perhaps a little like the Ausentinian maps,” Goldenrod suggested. “Truthful but confusing at the same time.”

“Yes,” Sophia agreed. “Exactly like that.”

“All attempts to describe the future have such an effect. They have the ring of truth because they seem possible, but they are unclear because nothing of the future is known with precision. What are these?”

“Maxine gave them to me. She says they are objects with meaning for the path I have chosen. But I don’t know what they mean.”

Goldenrod took them up one at a time, examining them silently before placing them back on the small table. “From a tree and an élan.”

“An élan? What is that?”

“It is also known as an elk, or moose. Both these objects hold memories.”

Sophia started. “Memories? What do you mean?”

“These rings each correspond to a year of the tree’s growth. The most recent year is here, by the bark. And this,” she said, picking up the brown shape, “is a piece of élan antler. Males drop their antlers each year.”

“Moose antler,” Sophia said wonderingly. “But how can they hold memories?”

“Memory maps, the kind you know, are made by people using other objects as their vehicles. These maps here are less complex, more intuitive. They were made by this tree”—she indicated the circle of wood—“and this moose.”

Sophia took this in. “And you can read them because you could speak with them while they were living.”

“It is likely the moose is still living,” Goldenrod corrected her, “since this antler looks quite fresh—it may be from last year or the year before. Yes—just as I would communicate with them in the present, I can read their memories of the past. But it is not entirely beyond you, Sophia. These may be the perfect way to begin.”

“Begin what?”

“Begin to understand the world as an Elodean does.”

“But I am not Eerie—Elodean. I can’t do what you do.”

Goldenrod smiled. She put down the antler and reached out, clasping Sophia’s hands in her own green ones. “You will remember what I told you in the Papal States—how the Weatherers read more deeply than we do, heal more expansively than the rest of us.”

“I remember.”

“It has always struck me that the quality that sets the Weatherers apart is also that which sets you apart. They weather time—this is what gives them their name. It is a different way of describing what you do: to wander, timeless.”

Sophia’s breath caught in her throat. “Really?”

“Yes. It is true that you are not Elodean, but I think our form of knowledge is not restricted to our blood. I think it can be taught—and learned. It might be easier to begin with something inert, like this bark and this bone. For you, it will resemble map reading.”

Sophia felt a sudden thrill rising in her chest. “If you think it’s possible—of course! Of course I want to learn. How do I begin?”

Goldenrod squeezed her hands. “We will begin tomorrow. Before then, if you like, spend time with these two sets of memories. Discover everything you can by examining them with all your senses. Then you will tell me what you find.”

Sophia nodded.

Goldenrod considered her closely. “Do you feel less anxious about your fortune?”

“Yes.” She looked up at the Eerie, her kind face inches from her own. Impulsively, she threw her arms around her friend’s neck. “Thank you.” Goldenrod could not know that apart from relieving her anxiety, she was giving Sophia what she had wanted for so many months: a way to keep learning, a way to keep reading the world through maps.