The Crimson Skew (34 page)

S
OPHIA HAD RUN
only a few feet when she heard a snort behind her. She turned, and Nosh was there, barring her way. “Thank you, Nosh,” she said gratefully as he sank down so she could mount. He grunted in reply as he rose, clearly offended that she had tried to run off without him. “You're right,” Sophia conceded, patting his neck. “It was not the best part of my plan. Your legs are much stronger than mine.”

Nosh galloped uphill through the muddy grass, toward the center line of the New Occident forces. As they neared the troops, Sophia saw a cluster of three riders who waited before
the rest. She swallowed her nervousness. Nosh slowed his pace and stopped ten feet away. The riders did not approach her. They did not move at all.

Two of the men wore goggled masks. The third, who wore a hat and carried his mask in the crook of his arm, was clearly General Griggs. Although his uniform sagged with the weight of the rain, he held himself erectly in the saddle, and his eyes considered Sophia with dispassion. The eyes were hard without being cold. Griggs seemed, in his upright posture and stern bearing, a man more guided by principle and obligation than by bloodlust, cruelty, or ambition. It was evident, from the white knuckles and slow breaths, that he was weary.

“The Eerie girl is caged for a reason,” Griggs said.

“And she is about to drown,” Sophia said. “I am here to speak for Fen Carver and the troops of the Indian Territories,” she declared in a clear voice.

Griggs did not respond. He leaned toward the soldier to his right and asked a question. The man removed his mask, revealing a round face with a red beard. Then he drew a telescope from the inside of his jacket pocket, wiped it with a handkerchief, and held it up to his eye. After a moment, he pocketed the telescope and said something to his commander.

Griggs sat back. “Go down, then, and pull it back twenty-five feet.”

The bearded soldier assented and waved to the soldiers behind him. Seven of them followed, plodding downhill at a measured pace. Sophia felt relief like a breath of dry air. Datura
would be safe for a little while longer.
On to the next step,
she told herself.

“Now,” Griggs said to Sophia. “Explain. I've already agreed to terms with Carver. You've violated those terms by meddling with the girl. Does Carver want me to ignore my side of the agreement as well?” Rivulets of water dripped over his white eyebrows as if over an awning. His mustache was a sodden broom.

“Yes,” Sophia said. “He was waiting for us to arrive with this.” She held up the mirrorscope. “And we arrived too late for your initial negotiations.”

Griggs took in the mirrorscope, and the white mustache twitched with his wry smile. “What is this? Some magical Indian weapon?”

“No,” Sophia replied. “No magic. It is a telescope. Carver is certain that if you look at his troops with this telescope, you will want to change the terms of battle.” She was relieved that her voice did not sound pleading. It sounded surprisingly confident. In fact, she realized, she felt confident.

General Griggs pondered her in silence. Then he urged his horse forward and held his hand out—not with curiosity, but with the unhurried air of a man who would conclude his business regardless of the trivial obstacles placed in his path. Taking the mirrorscope, he nudged his horse back a few paces. He examined the instrument briefly, turning it in his hand.

For a moment Sophia thought he would decline to look through it. But then he held it up to his right eye. He rotated it
slightly. Sophia held her breath. The rain fell against his hat in a constant patter. Behind him, the troops stood still and anonymous, faceless in their dark hoods. The weirwind howled; the storm crashed around them like waves. Sophia had the momentary impression that she and Griggs were floating in a tiny vessel, large enough for only the two of them, while an ocean raged around them.

There was no change in Griggs's expression, and he remained perfectly still—one arm around the goggled mask, the other raised with the mirrorscope, sitting astride his horse in the rain. But the effect of the mirrorscope was nonetheless evident—upon his horse. Sensing the invisible change in its rider, the animal raised its head in sudden terror, eyes wide, every muscle suddenly rigid. There was a long pause, in which Sophia imagined the horse bolting, throwing Griggs and the mirrorscope into the mud.

Then Nosh stepped forward and nudged the horse's neck. It startled, shuddered, and turned to consider the moose. Nosh held its gaze for several long seconds, until Griggs finally took the mirrorscope from his eye. Sophia watched his expressionless face for some sign of what he would do.

“How does this work?” Griggs finally asked.

Sophia looked at him, unsure of how to answer. “It is an Eerie device.”

“But how does it
work
?” Griggs insisted, lifting his hat so that his blue eyes were looking steadily into hers. When Sophia did not answer, he put his mask down on the horn of his saddle
and clasped the mirrorscope with both hands. He held it reverently, as if considering a sacred object. “I saw my father here,” he said. “And my brother. I saw things I thought no one else in the world had seen but me. How is that possible? How does it work?” He had not raised his voice, but the words had quickened, and as he finished his question he raised the mirrorscope before him.

“I don't know,” Sophia admitted. “I don't understand how it works. But if you saw things you remember, surely you must realize that the memories in the scope are true.”

“Someone else has seen what I have seen,” Griggs said, looking past Sophia, into the middle distance. His words were slow and considered, as if he was attempting to pinpoint the nature of his question. “Not just seen, but also
felt.
For I remember feeling nothing when I realized the horses had drowned, and the eye that remembers this”—he gestured to the mirrorscope—“felt grief. When I did not. It was many years before I felt grief.” He stopped abruptly and lifted the mirrorscope to his eye once more.

This time he truly studied the garnet map of New Occident. Sophia watched him, astonished, as the minutes passed. She found it hard to believe that he could stomach such horror for so long. As he lowered the mirrorscope a second time, she saw that it had indeed taken its toll. His hand trembled slightly. He turned to look back at the slope where his troops were assembled. “As if I needed reminding,” he said, his voice unsteady. His shoulders sagged. “Which one of us is not weary of war?” he asked. He seemed to be speaking to himself rather than to
Sophia or to his troops, who were out of earshot. “Which one of us does not wish to go home? To a home untouched by all that we have seen. A home now vanished, from days when our eyes were young. It is impossible to return to that place—that childhood, when the world was not a landscape of blood. A red place. And for some, even that childhood is no escape. All they remember, all they ever remember, is pain. There are children who fall like the rest of us. Who see what we do. Who fight.” He clenched the mirrorscope in his hand.

Sophia watched Griggs's grave face in suspense. She had seen many things in the mirrorscope, in the brief glimpse into New Occident's memories, and she could not be certain that he had seen any of the same. But she understood his words. The sound that had stayed with her from her glimpse into the mirrorscope was the wail of a child—high and terrified and unabated—a sound that even now rang in her ears. It was like nothing she had ever heard, yet it reminded her of another wailing: the Lachrima's long ebb and flow of grief, the cry that had echoed in her mind from the moment she learned that her parents had transformed.

Griggs straightened in his saddle and took a deep breath. He interrupted the silence. “It is compelling, what you have shown me,” he said, “but it cannot change my purpose in being here. I have no choice. I answer to the prime minister of New Occident. Carver knows this is no personal venture of mine.”

“But you said—”

“I know what I said. But look around you.” He gave a broad gesture that took in the entire valley. “This was not brought
about by my hand. I did not wish this or make this. I cannot stop it, either.”

“You
can
stop it!” Sophia insisted.

“Child, you will soon learn the most humbling lesson to be learned here, on this battlefield. We like to think that a single person can change the world. But there are times when one person counts for very little. There are times when he or she counts for nothing at all.” Griggs held the mirrorscope out to her, his face hard.

It failed,
Sophia realized, aghast.
He is going to attack despite what he has seen.
As Sophia struggled for words, taking the mirrorscope in her hand, the men Griggs had sent downhill returned.

The soldiers melted back into their places, and the officer with the red beard stopped before Griggs. “She is in position,” he said. “Carver has come back to this side of the river.”

Griggs shook his head very slightly. He lifted his horse's reins and said to Sophia, “Tell Carver I will honor the original terms. You and he have ten minutes to get across the river. Tell him I cannot disobey my orders.”

“But what about the weirwind?” Sophia asked. “Look at it!” She gestured at the crest of the hill, where the wall of wind remained poised. “It will descend at any moment. The weirwind will destroy this valley and anyone in it.”

“Eventually it will pass,” Griggs said. “The weather is no obstacle to me.”

Sophia did not know what to do. She had been so sure that the mirrorscope would change the general's mind, and though
it had clearly shaken him, it had not altered his course. All it had done was delay him.

Wait,
something said in Sophia's mind. It was not her own inner voice, but the other voice—that familiar instinct that she was beginning to recognize as the old one, as the Clime: as New Occident.
Wait,
it said again.

“Wait!” Sophia cried aloud.

Griggs paused, and she stared at him desperately, waiting herself for the old one to explain itself so she would know what to do next.

And then she saw them. Battling the rain, dipping and wavering and faltering, a flock of pigeons was flying through the storm. Above the pigeons flew larger birds—falcons and ravens—whose broader wings served as a canopy, protecting them from the worst of the rain. “Look!” she cried. “Iron pigeons!”

Griggs and his officers looked up. The mass of birds descended, arriving in a burst of cawing and screeching that seemed to explode around them. The falcons wheeled dizzily, circling and swooping before driving upward once more, while the ravens landed on the ground around them. The iron pigeons fluttered to a stop on Nosh's antlers—more than a dozen of them, cooing and shaking their feathers.

“Marcel!” Sophia exclaimed, recognizing at once the pigeon who had flown from Maxine's house in New Orleans with her message to Shadrack.

With trembling fingers, wet and clumsy, Sophia opened the compartment on Marcel's leg. She read the words on the tiny slip of paper, protecting it with her hand. Then she read the
next pigeon's message, and the next. All of the pigeons carried papers with the same words.

Then, her hand shaking, she reached out to General Griggs and handed him the papers. He read a few in silence, his drooping mustache twitching once. With a short exhalation, he tucked the papers inside his jacket, protecting them from the rain. “Is Carver still below?” he asked his officer.

The man with the red beard consulted his telescope. “He is.”

“Hold the troops here. I will return in a moment. Come along,” he said to Sophia.

Griggs led his horse downhill, with Nosh and Sophia behind him. They came quickly upon Datura's cage, where Bittersweet clung resolutely to the bars. Theo and Casanova stood beside him, their faces expectant. Beside them, a hatless Fen Carver stood in a dripping buckskin coat, a worn rifle slung across his shoulder. A handkerchief covered the lower half of his face, and he reached to pull it downward as Griggs and Sophia approached. He was frowning, but under his furrowed brow, his eyes held something light and fragile, like hope. “Well?” he asked, after Griggs had reined his horse and dismounted.