31

The Lined Palm

1891, July 1: 2-Hour 05

The dungeons are from an another period, likely the earliest of the Triple Eras. Soil sampling from the underground vaults of the imperial palace in Nochtland suggests that the extensive subterranean architecture dates to several hundred years before the topsoil upon which the palace is built. In other words, the visible structure of the palace, which has been in place since the Great Disruption, belongs to a different age than do its foundations.

—From Veressa Metl’s “Local Soils: Implications for Cartology”

YEARS BEFORE BLANCA knew of the glaciers’ advance, she had sought to enrich her railway company by extending the track south through New Occident’s Indian Territories and all the way to Nochtland. Princess Justa, unsurprisingly, looked favorably upon the investor who promised to connect the isolated capital with the wealthy cities to the north. Over time, Blanca had proven herself to be more than a match for the insular monarch, easily securing a monopoly on the railroad route and then persuading her that a mere weirwind was moving north.

But it was no weirwind that sped toward Nochtland under the shadowed light of the eclipsed moon. What had begun as an imperceptible movement far away in Tierra del Fuego had accelerated day by day into a rapid, erratic progress that left little time for flight. The glaciers had passed Xela and were making their way north, obliterating everything that lay in their path.

A jagged border divided the vast plains and mountains of the Baldlands from the gleaming Southern Snows. Where the two Ages met, a brilliant light, wild and unpredictable as a lightning storm, pierced the night air. All who saw it fled in terror, and only a few who glimpsed the distant flashes on the horizon understood what they meant: to see the lights was to have already waited too long.

Justa’s prisoners had been returned to the glass-shard pit in the depths of the Nochtland palace; Sophia, Theo, and Shadrack had been forced to join them. Blanca had again fooled the princess, this time with a story about an elaborate conspiracy by the Mark of Iron, hatched in the Indies and executed with the assistance of palace insiders. Justa’s suspicious mind accepted the tale without hesitation, and she placed the captives entirely in Blanca’s power.

At first, amidst reunions and urgent conversation, the prisoners hardly noticed the walls around them. Shadrack described his capture, Blanca’s ambitions for the carta mayor, the long voyage south, and his thwarted attempt to escape. Sophia told him everything that had happened since she had discovered him missing in Boston. And Veressa related how Martin’s silver leg had been detected when one of the guards’ dogs had sniffed it out; Burr had impulsively drawn his pistol, and they had been thrown into the dungeons immediately. But once Theo had repeated the rumors of the Lachrima moving north, and once Shadrack had explained that their advance doubtlessly resulted from the Southern Snows’ rapidly encroaching border, a shocked silence overtook them. Nothing, it seemed, would stop the Ice Age from inexorably erasing everything in its path, creating and then driving a multitude of Lachrima before it.

Only Sophia was not downcast. She leaned against Shadrack’s shoulder while he spoke with Veressa, indifferent to the packed dirt floor and the somber half-darkness. The elation that came with being reunited with her uncle, Theo, and the others buoyed her, and their resigned faces only filled her with determination. She could not believe that they had traveled so far merely to be engulfed by glaciers. The Fates have left us with enough, she thought, clutching her watch and the spool of thread in her pocket, and we have to make the most of it. Her mind raced ahead to the danger that awaited. She could not imagine the advent of the Southern Snows, but the image of countless Lachrima fleeing the site of their erasures was vivid. She shivered. Seeing Blanca’s mutilated face had been horrible enough.

“Tell me again why her face is like that,” she said to Shadrack, who had paused in his conversation.

“You mean why it’s scarred?” She nodded. “You remember Veressa’s story of our visit to Talisman’s house, all those years ago? As I said, I realized as soon as I saw her that Blanca was the Lachrima he kept imprisoned there.”

“Yes. But why did he cut her face?”

Shadrack shook his head. “The man had been driven mad. He believed he could somehow cut through her skin to find her face underneath.”

“The poor wretches,” Veressa murmured. “Both of them.”

As she spoke, a trio of guards appeared at the edge of the pit and began lowering the wooden ladder. The prisoners looked up expectantly. “Only the girl is to come up,” said one of the guards. The other two held their spears aloft, as if to enforce his command. “The girl named Sophia.”

“She’s not going without me,” Shadrack called up.

“Only the girl.”

“I’ll be fine, Shadrack,” Sophia said. “We don’t have a choice anyway.”

“Send her up,” the guard called again.

“She’s right, Shadrack.” Veressa took his hand and pulled him aside. “Let her go.”

Sophia began carefully climbing the wooden rungs, eyes fixed on her hands, not daring to look at the sharp glass shards inches away. When she reached the top, the guards swung her up by the arms. She caught a brief glimpse over her shoulder of the forlorn group clustered at the bottom of the pit, and the sight brought a knot to her throat.

The guards walked her back through the cavernous room and then the deserted servants’ quarters. Emerging onto a vast stone courtyard, Sophia felt her eyes drawn upward to the peculiar light in the sky. The mottled face of the pale moon was almost hidden, as if by a dark veil. Sophia was surprised to hear music and laughter in the distance—the festivities for the eclipse, which seemed as if it had occurred days earlier.

The feeling of unreality continued when they entered a set of apartments at the rear of the palace, overlooking the gardens. The airy opulence took Sophia’s breath away. Carpeted with pale yellow petals, the main room was lit by tall glass candle-lamps that cast a flickering patchwork of golden light and dark shadows. Clusters of white flowers draped over the furniture emitted a heavy, sweet smell, and strings of clear glass bells hung in the open windows. Their quiet tinkling reminded Sophia of Mrs. Clay.

But it was not Mrs. Clay who awaited her. Blanca stood by one of the windows, her veil once again covering her face. “Leave her with me,” she curtly told the guards. “You may wait outside.” The guards left Sophia near a pair of brocaded chairs.

Blanca settled herself in one of the chairs and motioned Sophia into the other. Faint music through the closed windows could not distract Sophia from the image of the scarred face she had seen in the dungeon; she stared at the veil, unable to think of anything but what lay beneath.

Then in one fluid motion Blanca lifted it. Sophia was once again shaken by the gruesome face, where the scars were so numerous they made a mass of muddled flesh. “That’s right,” Blanca said softly. “Count them. Count them, and imagine the pain they cost me, and then imagine how little now it costs me to pain others. You should know that, before you decide to resist my will with a child’s conception of right and wrong.” She said these words sweetly, as if promising Sophia something wonderful. “What have you known of pain? Nothing.”

The pain that Blanca described was genuine—that was clear—and she had indeed suffered more than Sophia could ever know. As she forced herself to look at the scars, Sophia felt her terror ebb, replaced by a wave of sympathy for the creature who sat before her, first robbed of her precious memories and then burdened with unspeakable new ones.

“You’re right,” Sophia said, willing herself to look directly at where Blanca’s eyes should have been. “I haven’t known pain like you have. I hope I never will.”

“Your uncle has told you, then, how I earned my scars?”

She nodded, transfixed by the lines that rumpled and shifted across Blanca’s face as she spoke. “How is it that you can see and talk?” Sophia blurted out.

Blanca’s face went still as ice and Sophia’s heart jumped. She had not meant for the question to burst forth. But she could not help it: along with sympathy, she felt curiosity.

Then, to her surprise, Blanca laughed. “I have never met a child like you. I see you truly do not frighten easily. There is no doubt you are your uncle’s niece.” She shook her head. “To answer your question,” Blanca said, her voice direct, absent its former enveloping sweetness, “no one knows how it is that the Lachrima can see and speak and smell despite our lost features.”

Sophia considered this for a moment. “I have never met another Lachrima, but I didn’t think they spoke and . . . behaved the way you do.”

“They usually do not. But you see, I am different.” She paused. “I will explain how, since I respect your sense of inquiry. I have known many who felt horror at my face, but few with a desire to understand.” The Lachrima shifted in her chair, so that her face was partly hidden in shadow. “A few days ago, when I read the map your uncle drew of that place—that hell where I suffered for three years—I could not fathom how he knew of it.” Her voice dropped. “I had no wish to be reminded of it. But then I remembered his face. It was your uncle who came, in the end, and who opened the door to my freedom.”

Sophia felt her heart swell with pride.

“But your uncle does not know everything that happened to me there. Do you see this?” She held out her ungloved hand. A clear gray line was inked across the palm, tracing the long wrinkle that curved toward her wrist.

“What is it?”

“The cartologer made my ruined face even worse. He drew thousands of maps across my skin in vain. But, whether he knew it or not, he drew one true line, and this was it. When he made this line, only weeks before I was freed, I remembered everything from my past life. It came upon me instantly, and as I traced my own palm with the fingers of my other hand, it was as though I was reading my own history.”

“Everything?”

“All the memories that I had the day they were lost.” Blanca sighed. “I remembered my home—my Age.” Sophia could hear a smile in her voice as she continued. “The wondrous Glacine Age. I remembered being only a few years older than you are now when the Great Disruption occurred. The beautiful and terrible Disruption, which felt like falling into a deep pit of endless light.” Blanca stood and walked to the window. She looked out into the gardens with the glass bells tinkling quietly above her. “It was the day I turned twenty. I had gone to our Hall of Remembrances to spend my birthday among its beautiful maps.” She saw Sophia’s enquiring look. “It was a great chamber, with maps recounting the city’s history. The Glacine Age has many such edifices.” Blanca paused. “You have seen one, as a matter of fact.”

Sophia blinked in surprise. “I have?”

“The four maps,” she replied quietly. “The memories in the four maps took place in such a hall.”

Sophia recalled the long climb up a spiraling stairwell, the many people around her, and the building’s slow collapse. “But does that mean the Disruption occurred in your Age?”

“I do not know,” Blanca said so softly that Sophia almost could not hear her. “I do not know. I am still attempting—” Her voice suddenly broke with frustration. “I am still attempting to understand the maps. What I do know,” she went on more firmly, turning back toward Sophia, “is that the carta mayor will explain everything.”

She crossed the room to open a low cabinet and returned holding something which she handed to Sophia: her pack. “I believe there are other things besides the maps of value to you here.” Sophia took it in silence and held it closely to her chest. “I cannot stop the glaciers. But I have appealed to your uncle to do what he can—not only for my Age, but for all the Ages: for the world. Now I make that appeal to you, as well. You are the only one who can persuade him.” Blanca’s voice, musical and mournful, filled Sophia with a sudden sense of longing for all the things she would never see once the Southern Snows had encased the world in ice. She would never see the distant Ages she yearned to explore; she would never see Boston again, or the house on East Ending Street; and she would never, she thought desperately, see the parents she hoped were still somewhere far away, waiting to be found. “This New World is ending,” Blanca went on, as if reading Sophia’s thoughts. “But we can still determine what takes its place. If your uncle helps me to find and rewrite the carta mayor, we can ensure that the world emerging from the destruction is a whole world—a good world. Now that I have read the four maps, I am more convinced than ever. He is our only hope.”

“Shadrack will not do it,” Sophia said matter-of-factly, without hostility. “Even if he could. He said so.”

The tinkling of the glass bells mingled with the distant laughter and music that drifted up from the gardens. “Perhaps your uncle has not told you,” Blanca finally said, “how complete the carta mayor is. The map shows everything that has happened and everything that will happen. Do you know what that means?”

Sophia gazed at the scars on Blanca’s face, a slight spark of an idea forming in her mind. “I think so.”

“It means that if Shadrack read the map, he could tell you anything you might want to know. Anything. All your curiosities about the past, satisfied. The carta mayor would allow you to know, once and for all, what happened to Bronson and Minna Tims so many years ago.”

Sophia felt a sharp sting at the edge of her eyes.

“Yes, I know of their disappearance,” Blanca said gently. “I know many things about you, Sophia: I know of your illustrious family past; I know that you and Shadrack are inseparable; I know that you have no sense of time. Carlton Hopish’s memories of you are fond ones.” She paused. “I cannot give you your parents back,” she continued, her voice heavy with sadness, “but with the carta mayor I can tell you for certain what became of them.”

Sophia stared down at her lap and struggled to hold back her tears. To know for certain what became of them, she thought numbly.

As if sensing her confusion, Blanca leaned forward. “Think what that would mean.” Then she gracefully stood and walked slowly to one of the wardrobes that stood against the wall. “Have you ever seen a water map?”

“No,” Sophia said dully. “I was only starting to learn about maps.”

“It may interest you to see one,” Blanca said, returning with a white bowl and a tall glass flask. “They are rare. They require skill and a patience few possess. They are made of condensation. Drop by drop, the mapmaker encapsulate the meanings of the map in vaporized water, then gathers those vapors to make a whole. This one was made in a cave far north in the Prehistoric Snows. The mapmaker, who was also an explorer, recounted his journey there.” Placing the bowl on the table that stood between them, she uncorked the flask and poured out its contents. To Sophia it looked like an ordinary bowl of water, except for the fact that it was unnaturally still.

Blanca returned to the wardrobe and came back with the glass map, which she held over the bowl. “Do you see how it changes the appearance of the water?”

Sophia beheld what looked like a bowl full of shimmering light. She nodded.

Putting the glass aside, Blanca held a small white stone over the bowl of water, which looked ordinary once more. “Now watch the surface.” The stone fell from her fingers into the bowl. The ripples that formed in the water took on extraordinary shapes, rising like hills, dipping into shallow valleys, and curling into unlikely spirals high above the rim. Fine lines of color wove through the water, giving the shapes texture and depth.

Sophia gasped despite herself and leaned in to see more. “How do you read it?”

“It requires years of study. I am barely able to understand them. Your uncle,” she added, “is the only person I know who can both read and write water maps. Both are difficult, but it can be done. The Tracing Glass before you makes it easier; it is one of the most powerful instruments in the world, and with it your uncle could certainly revise the water map you see before you.”

Sophia could not take her eyes from the color-laced terrain. “It is beautiful,” she whispered.

“Imagine a map like this one, but as wide as a lake and with the mysteries of the world written upon it,” Blanca murmured. “Wouldn’t you wish to see it? Wouldn’t you wish to gaze upon the living world on the water’s surface? To ask it your questions and hear its secrets?” She gently lowered the Tracing Glass and sat down. Before her lay an ordinary bowl of water with a small stone at the bottom.

Sophia sat back with a sigh. She listened to the laughter from the garden and let her eyes drift from the water map to Blanca’s face. The sense of sadness she had felt, imagining the Ages that would be lost beneath the glaciers, changed as suddenly and swiftly as the surface of the water. What had been lying still within her suddenly rose up, taking definite shape. She saw the course she had to follow clearly, as if it were drawn on a map. She stood up. “Give me a chance to talk alone with Shadrack,” Sophia told Blanca. “I will convince him.”