The Glass Sentence (The Mapmakers Trilogy) (26 page)

25

The Royal Library

S
OPHIA
STILL
COULD
not believe that she had carried something so precious in her pack for so may days: not simply a tracing glass, but a memory map of the Great Disruption! Now she was certain that Montaigne and the Nihilismians wanted to use it to find the
carta mayor
, and Veressa was inclined to agree.

Veressa had offered to show them the other maps, so they had all gone to the palace library, where she retrieved them from the safe. The tracing glass could not be used because it was still day, but even reading the other three maps together was overwhelming. Each of them took a turn with the layered maps that possibly told the story of the Great Disruption, and each came away silent, lost in the past. Sophia struggled to match the three parts she had just seen with her memories of the glass map.
How do they all fit together?
she wondered.

Veressa returned the three maps to the library safe and led them back through the palace. The floors were stone tile, covered by thick carpets of fresh petals or leaves. As they walked along a corridor strewn with fragrant pine needles, Sophia heard a light tinkling sound, like the ringing of glassy bells, and she was surprised to see Veressa hurry to the wall and kneel. Martin followed suit, lowering himself carefully on his bad leg. “Everyone kneel by the wall,” Veressa whispered urgently. Calixta, Burr, and Sophia did as they were told, though it struck her that all of them—the pirates particularly—looked very odd. They were not the kind of people who bowed to anyone.

The tinkling sound grew louder, and then Sophia saw a slow procession round the corner. It was made up of women dressed in pale green silks that trailed to the floor, their skirts adorned with glass bells; orchids studded their elaborately dressed hair.

One woman wore her hair long and loose. It was bright green—the shade of an uncut meadow—and grew to her waist. Folded down across her back were what appeared to be two long eucalyptus leaves that grew from her shoulder blades. They were wings.

“Greetings, Royal Botanist,” Princess Justa said, “Royal Librarian.” She had the same accent as Veressa and Martin—sharp, with rolled
r
’s—but her tone was high and imperious, as if she spoke from a great height.

Veressa and Martin murmured their greetings without raising their eyes from the floor. Calixta and Burr, Sophia noticed, were staring straight ahead—neither at the floor nor at the royal entourage. Sophia could not help herself; she looked directly at the princess. Justa’s gaze traveled over the small group and finally rested on Sophia, who felt a chill as the princess looked her over disdainfully from head to foot—or, rather, from head to knee. “What are
those
?” she asked icily.

Everyone in the hallway turned to stare. The princess’s attendants seemed to gasp in unison, and an alarming tinkling of bells ensued as they scuttled to the opposite wall. “I’m sorry?” Sophia said, more meekly than she intended to.

“In your ears,” the princess demanded.

Sophia’s hand flew up to her right ear. “Oh,” she said. “My earrings.” She looked at Veressa anxiously and was alarmed to see her vexed expression.

“Silver, if I’m not mistaken,” the princess said. She was smiling, but there was no mirth in her smile.

“Yes,” Sophia admitted.

The princess looked coldly at Veressa. “We are surprised at the guests you choose to bring into the palace,” she said. “If we did not know you better, we would ask you to answer for your intentions. This royal family has been relentlessly persecuted, our own mother a victim of the iron conspiracy, and we continue to survive only by the strictest vigilance. Is it your wish to expose us to danger?”

“Do not doubt my intentions, Highness. She is only a child—and a foreigner,” Veressa said respectfully, without looking up. “She meant nothing by it.”

A long pause ensued, while the waiting women fussed and their many bells tinkled. “We will trust your judgment in this matter,” Justa said finally, “but consider this a warning. Clearly you must be reminded that the Mark of Iron are baseless creatures. The dungeons of this palace are filled with cowards who have attempted to destroy us, from without and from within. Sending a child to do their work is precisely the kind of attack they would attempt.”

Veressa murmured an apology. The princess lifted her head, took a step forward, and moved on, the glassy tinkling fading as the procession disappeared around the corner.

All five of them rose to their feet. “I’m so sorry, Veressa!” Sophia cried. “I didn’t think!”

“My dear, you’ve done nothing wrong,” Martin told her.

“Of course she hasn’t! It is absolutely absurd,” said Veressa, as she strode down the corridor. “The level of fanaticism and intolerance that has taken hold of this royal family. Imagine objecting to a pair of silver earrings.”

“Good thing we’ve kept our swords and revolvers hidden,” Calixta said cheerfully.

Veressa and Martin stopped in their tracks.
“You didn’t!”
Veressa asked in a whisper. Martin glanced in either direction, as if the walls might have overheard.

“We never leave them behind,” Burr said firmly. “And they are
very
well-hidden.”

“You would certainly be arrested if the guards discovered them! My father and I would be unable to intervene. Indeed, they might well arrest us as well, and we would all be joining those poor fools in the dungeons.”

“I’m sorry, Veressa,” Calixta put in. “But we’ve always brought them when we come to see you. Why should it be any different now?”

“I had no idea,” Veressa said, her voice tense and quiet. “You’ve been running an extraordinary risk. The palace is even more guarded than usual because of the eclipse festivities in two days and the weirwind that is moving north.”

The pirates exchanged glances. “We should leave,” Burr said. “Our apologies for having placed you in danger.”

Veressa sighed. “No,
I’m
sorry,” she said regretfully. “The situation is ridiculous, and I am embarrassed on behalf of the princess—embarrassed that we make ourselves so inhospitable. Please stay at least until tomorrow. For your own sakes, I won’t urge you to stay through the eclipse, but it’s much too late to leave today.”

Martin shook his head with exasperation. “They shouldn’t have to leave at all. But I agree that it will be safer if you do,” he had to admit.

Sophia silently removed her earrings as they returned to the royal botanist’s apartments. Justa’s suspiciousness worked through the five of them like a poison—they could not seem to agree on what to do next. They agreed that finding Shadrack was essential and discussed how to handle Montaigne and the Sandmen, but formulating a plan without any real knowledge of who and where they were proved impossible. They were stymied.

Sophia listened, but her mind kept drifting to the four maps. Something about them unsettled her, demanding her concentration like a riddle, worming this way and that, elusive and urgent. Their memories were so detailed and so real that she could have sworn they were her own—but, of course, that was how memory maps worked. As the others talked around and around in circles, Sophia tried to work out the riddle by drawing in her notebook. She found no solution.

Her thoughts continued through dinner—maize cakes and squash flower—and later, in bed, she searched Shadrack’s atlas for something that would help. But the more she read, the more obscure the riddle seemed, and nothing explained why the memories from the four maps seemed so strangely familiar. She finally turned to the bedroom bookshelf for distraction and saw a volume titled
Lives of the Nochtland Royals.

There was little about Princess Justa’s early years. By contrast, the story Mazapán had told of the princess’s death took up several pages—especially because he had not described the terrible consequences.

T
HE EMPEROR DISCOVERED, BY THE vital assistance of his advisors, that a pair of brothers with the Mark of Iron had cunningly disguised their metal and risen to positions of prestige. Elad and Olin Spore would not confess, no matter how rigorous the interrogation, but it was speculated that they had placed the orchids on purpose to poison the empress and then prey upon the weakened emperor. If this was their plan, they were sorely disappointed. Far from weakening, the emperor sentenced them both to death. Then he scoured the court for any others with the Mark of Iron, and he finally sought comfort in the Religion of the Cross, though he had never before been a believer. The court was reduced to only a few close advisors, and the emperor ordered greater and greater penalties for those who wore or used metal of any kind. And yet it was never known for certain who had poisoned the empress. Some months after her death, the emperor began his prolonged and noble quest to conquer the far reaches of his territory.

Sophia sighed. It was no wonder, she reflected, that Princess Justa showed such intolerance.

—19-Hour 27—

S
OPHIA
AWOKE
LATE
in the night to find the room entirely dark. She could hear Calixta breathing from the other bed, but that had not awoken her. It was her dream, she realized. She had been dreaming about the four maps. They had all returned to the library as soon as the moon had risen, and though considering the four maps together had yielded no new answers, something about them had stayed with her and worked its way into her dreams. She bolted upright and fumbled for her pack, which was lying beside her pillow; then she thrust the atlas into it and strapped it over her shoulder before scurrying down the short ladder. She stepped into her slippers and hurried out of the bedroom, quietly opening and closing the door behind her.

As she shuffled along the dark corridor she became aware of the night noises around her: crickets in the patio; the murmuring of the garden’s fountains from beyond the walls; the quiet tinkling of the wind chimes, delicate and high-pitched or thrumming and deep. Sophia was surprised to see the door of Martin’s workroom open and light streaming out of it.
Perhaps it is not as late as I think
, she considered, reaching for her pocket watch. It was past nineteen-hour. Curious, she peered into the laboratory.

Plants crowded the wooden work surfaces and hung from every inch of the ceiling. Glass canisters filled with soil were clustered beside tall flasks of blue water and tiny green dropper bottles. Martin was on a stool, examining something through his enormous spectacles. Sophia was astonished to see on the table what looked like a wooden leg with Martin’s sock and shoe at the end of it. His left pant leg was entirely empty from the knee down. “Martin?” she asked tentatively.

He jumped in his seat. “Sophia!” he said. “How you startled me.” He removed his spectacles. “What are you doing up?”

“I was having a nightmare,” Sophia said, unsure herself of what the dream had contained.

“Ah well—it happens. Strange place and strange doings.” He noticed that she was staring at the leg. “Oh! You hadn’t seen my prosthesis.”

She shook her head, embarrassed that he had caught her staring but relieved that he seemed not to mind. “I didn’t—Is it made of wood?”

Martin took up the leg and looked at it critically. “Indeed, it is made of wood. Brittle, lifeless wood, I’m afraid.”

“What happened to your real leg?” Sophia asked. “Your previous leg, I mean.”

He winked at her. “I lost it adventuring. Before I was old,” he said, putting down the wooden leg, “and before I had a limp, and before I was a botanist—I was an explorer!”

“You were?”
Sophia exclaimed, delighted.

“I was. Not a very good explorer, as it happens. In a remote region of the northern Baldlands, I discovered a valley full of strange animals.”

“What kind of animals?”

“Enormous beasts—some as large as the conservatory! They were clearly from another Age. Well, I foolishly believed myself to be safe among them because I observed that they ate only plants—not flesh. But,” he said, smiling ruefully, “I had failed to consider that to them I probably looked like a plant.”

“What do you mean?”

Martin lifted his right pant leg. His shin was a strange color—whitish green, like the trunk of a beech tree. “You see, my legs are more tree trunk than muscle and bone.”

“I had no idea!” Sophia thought of the “sequins” on Veressa’s arms: living thorns, just like Martin’s living trunk of a leg.

“Nor did I have any idea that I would so closely resemble a tasty sprig!” Martin laughed. “I was happily taking notes when one of the beasts suddenly reached its huge head down, toppled me over with a little nudge, and bit off my foot!”

“Oh, how horrible!” Sophia exclaimed.

“It was not picturesque,” Martin admitted. “Fortunately, I was not traveling alone, and my companions helped me to safety. When I returned home, a fine sculptor created this wooden leg for me. I still have a limp,” he said, “and I could no longer be an explorer. But in fact I am grateful to that giant beast. Were it not for him, I would never have discovered botany.”

Sophia had to smile. “I suppose that’s true.”

“I hope I haven’t given you more nightmares.”

“No, I don’t think so,” she said, turning to go. “Are you going to work all night?”

“Just a little bit longer. I’ll see you in the morning. Sleep well.”

Fortunately, Sophia’s erratic inner clock did not affect her inner compass. Although the palace was very dark and she had only been to the library once, she had no difficulty finding her way. The pine needles covering the floor muffled her footsteps entirely.

Sophia checked to make sure she was alone, then slipped quietly through the double doors into the deserted, dimly lit room.