The Golden Specific (12 page)

Miles shook his head. “It would have made no difference. The Eerie refuse to be found.” He sighed. “I head off again in a few days to make another attempt.”

“What if Sophia and I go with you?”

“I'm afraid that won't be possible. This will be a different kind of expedition.”

“What does that mean?”

“I will be posing as someone I am not.”

“I do that better than you, old man!”

“Undeniable. But it does not alter the fact that I must go alone.”

—12-Hour 11—

T
HE
TRIP
INTO
the city center from the Nihilismian Archive felt interminable. Sophia tried concentrating on her discovery to make the time pass quickly, but it had the opposite effect. Every block drifted by too slowly; every corner brought a lingering pause. A man swept the sidewalk before a shop selling rubber boots. The store beside it advertised oysters in bright, white letters. Workers lingered during their break outside a dye shop; an engraving shop announced a summer sale; and a young servant cleaned the windows of a boardinghouse two doors down. Near the State House, a cemetery with crooked
stones offered a quiet corner of shade in the busy city. After what seemed like hours, the trolley finally stopped near Boston Common. Sophia ran as fast as she could and at twelve-hour wound her way up the stairs to the ministry offices in the State House.

The serious-looking young man at the front desk in Shadrack's office had met Sophia once or twice before, but he either didn't remember her or pretended not to. “Is my uncle, Shadrack Elli, here?” she asked breathlessly.

He gave her a severe look, as though breathing audibly in the august offices of the ministry was a serious discourtesy. “He is very busy at the moment.”

“Please just tell him that Sophia is here and that Minna wrote a diary. He'll know what it means.”

The young man did not deign to answer, but he rose from his chair and left by the corridor at the rear of the room, returning only a moment later with Shadrack close on his heels.

“Sophia?”

“Shadrack! I found a lead—a real one, this time. She wrote a diary!”

Shadrack looked at her with astonishment. “Come,” he said, reaching out a hand. “Let's talk in my office.”

She hurried after him, not even sparing a glance for the disapproving clerk. As soon as Shadrack had closed his office door, Sophia related her discovery in one long, excited burst. “Remember how I told you about the new archive I visited? It was the Nihilismian Archive on Beacon Street.” Shadrack's eyebrows rose, but he did not interrupt. “I was looking through
an index of things written in 1881. The year they left. I thought it would lead to nothing, but it was Remorse's idea. She works there—she's Nihilismian but she's very kind, not at all like the ones we know; she's really been helping me, Shadrack. And today I was reading the index and it said ‘Diary of Wilhelmina Tims'—I couldn't believe it. Her diary! It's at the Granada Depository. But the depository doesn't send materials or give access to anyone other than Nihilismians, so Remorse said that we could go with her. She's going on a mission to the Papal States and she's leaving tomorrow, and she said she would ask the captain for permission for you and me to come, too, and she'll get us into the archive. And then we can come back. Maybe the pirates will bring us back—do you think we could ask them? But we have to go with her tomorrow.”

Shadrack seemed to have been rendered speechless.

Sophia watched him anxiously, searching his face for some sign of the same elation she was feeling. “It's too wonderful to pass up, don't you think?”

“I think,” her uncle said slowly, “that this is certainly a wonderful lead. And though I am curious how you gained access to the Nihilismian Archive, I am very glad to know that the diary exists. But I don't think leaving tomorrow on a Nihilismian vessel is the best way to acquire it.”

Sophia felt something slow and unpleasant uncoiling in her stomach.

“The diary isn't going anywhere,” he continued. “I can send someone to get it—someone who is familiar with the Papal States.”

“But we need a Nihilismian to get us access to the archive!”

Shadrack gave her a pointed look. “Yes, but Sophia—how did you get into the archive in Boston?”

Sophia felt herself blushing. “I said I was Nihilismian.”

Shadrack shook his head. “You took a grave risk. But having done so, you realize the possibilities. If you could lie to get into the Boston archive, why couldn't someone else do the same in Granada? This Nihilismian friend of yours is helpful, perhaps, but not essential.”

Something began to shift inside of Sophia, as if an hourglass that had been lying on its side had been tipped and its inner sand was now, grain by grain, accumulating into a pile. She realized that what she felt was anger. “So
I
shouldn't lie, but it's acceptable for someone else to lie for the same purpose?”

Shadrack looked apologetic in the way a person does when he expects to be forgiven: rueful, but without remorse. He could not see her anger, just as he could not see what that look of halfhearted apology had cost her for so many months. “I am simply pointing out that this particular access into the Granada Depository is not the only one. It is long and arduous and wholly unnecessary. As it happens, Soph, we will not need to lie at all. I have a contact in the Papal States who has connections with all its archives and libraries, and he can requisition a copy even if he cannot gain personal access to the Granada Depository. There is no need for us to go.”

Sophia simply looked at him.

She could not explain why she felt so betrayed, when she was the one who had concealed the truth. As she opened her
mouth to speak, she knew her words would be hurtful ones, but she did not know how to express what she was feeling otherwise. “Last summer you started teaching me to read maps,” she said, her voice quiet but shaking.

Shadrack looked down at the floor. “I know.”

“You were teaching me to read maps so that we could go out into the world and find Minna and Bronson. Now it seems we no longer have need for maps. We no longer plan to go anywhere. Why?”

Shadrack considered this in silence. Sophia waited, urging him to understand what she was asking.
I want you to care about this as much as I do. Forget about the ministry. Think about your sister. Think about me. I want you back.

But when Shadrack spoke, his air of weary regret was unchanged. “The circumstances are different now. Bligh hopes to overturn the border closure. And, as you know, I have obligations here that prevent me from traveling. I am sorry, Sophia.”

She looked at him without speaking.

“This clue you have found is very worthwhile,” Shadrack said, his tone placating, “and I will send for a copy of the diary at once. But it does not require us to sail across the Atlantic.”

The sand slipping down inside her reached its peak and stopped, leaving some upper part of her empty. “I understand,” she said. She had an odd thought, as she turned to leave, about the Nihilismians and their desire to feel nothing in a world that was untrue. Their intentions made sense to her now. She felt nothing at all.

“Sophia,” Shadrack said, putting out his hand to stop her.
“It's a wonderful find—the diary. Congratulations.”

“Yes. It is.” She left his office and walked quietly through the narrow corridor into the waiting room, then out into the main hallway. Then she left the State House and worked her way home.

—13-Hour 09—

T
HEO
FOUND
HER
in her room, holding the spool of silver thread. Her face was wet with tears. He edged in and sat down on the floor, then gave her a friendly smile. “Want to tell me about it?”

Sophia held up the spool. “The Fates gave me a sign.”

Theo waited.

“I was at the Nihilismian Archive. I found out that there's a diary written by Mother in a depository in Granada. And my friend Remorse at the archive says she can take us there—tomorrow. She can get us into the archive. But when I told Shadrack, he said no, that someone else would get a copy of it and send it.”

Theo pondered this. “You wanted to go to Granada.”

Sophia sighed. “This is the best clue we've found! And they
need
me. Mother needs me. Don't ask me how I know. I
know.
I thought—I thought that he and I would go, and then the diary would tell us where she is, and then we would go from there, maybe. You were right—I want to
do
something. And I thought Shadrack would, too. But he has the ministry, and he says things are different now.”

“This friend of yours, Remorse—she's a Nihilismian?”

“Yes.”

“And you trust her?”

“I do. She's different. I like her.”

“She said you could go with her tomorrow? What, by sail?”

Sophia nodded.

Theo looked out the window and then at Sophia. He gave a slow smile that ended in a grin.

“What?”

“Let's go with her.”

The spool of thread in Sophia's hand caught the sunlight and glimmered faintly. She felt her breath expanding in her lungs. “Go with her?” she echoed.

“You and me. We pack, we plan—or,
you
plan, more like—and we go. We did it before, didn't we? We can do it again.”

Sophia felt the tears welling up in her eyes, and she realized it was due to a surprising gain and a surprising loss. They had come about gradually, but now, in a single hour, she saw they were both decisive. That ease she had felt with her beloved uncle, the sense of always being encompassed and known, had drifted away. In its place was the certainty of finding comprehension and sympathy and humor somewhere else. Shadrack no longer understood her; Theo did.

“I guess we could,” she whispered.

 11 

Alone Among the Maps

T
HE
A
TLAS
B
OOK
S
HOP
,
as the hanging sign with Atlas shouldering the globe suggested, specialized in travel books, historical geography, and maps. As the bell above the door rang and Sophia crossed the worn threshold, she heard a cheery “Hullo!” from the back. “Mr. Crawford, it's Sophia,” she called.

“Sophia!” The top of Cornelius Crawford's mostly bald head, his blue eyes, and a red nose emerged from behind a precarious stack of books. “Good to see you. I'm buried back here with new inventory. Let me know if you need anything.”

“Thanks, I will.” Sophia gave him a brief wave and began searching the tight, crammed aisles for the section on the Papal States.

She and Theo had packed their bags that morning, but Sophia could not bring herself to take any of Shadrack's books
and maps to help them. It seemed like theft to her, paired with the deception.

Theo insisted, unconvincingly, that the two of them had not lied. Shadrack had come home late the previous evening, his face furrowed by some unvoiced concern. Over a silent dinner, it became clear to Sophia that he had either forgotten about the diary or become so preoccupied with matters at the ministry that the diary seemed unimportant by comparison. She felt a sharp stab of sadness, and her resolve hardened. When she heard him leaving the house in the morning, she sat up in bed and hugged her knees, wishing everything were different. Then she got out of bed and began packing for the journey.

Now she was at the Atlas, buying the books and maps they would need, before meeting Theo at the
Verity
. She had to admit that despite the difficulty of leaving Shadrack under such circumstances, a slow pulse of excitement had begun to move through her.

The shop was filled with the comforting smell of worn paper and leather bindings, and the sun filtered in through the half-closed blinds, as if through the branches of a tree onto the disordered floor of a paper forest. Stepping carefully over little piles of books that seemed to sprout like mushrooms from the floorboards, Sophia found the Papal States section, sat gingerly down on a pile of large volumes, and was soon lost in the pages of a history written by Fulgencio Esparragosa. Its dozens of maps and long chapters were organized around the pilgrimage routes to the religious shrines
that dotted the vast peninsula. The routes had been crippled, Esparragosa explained, by the spread of the plague known in the Papal States as
lapena
, a dreadful illness that had paralyzed trade, dried up commerce along the pilgrimage routes, and decimated entire villages.

No other customers entered the Atlas while she read. From time to time Cornelius, hidden at the back, spoke querulously to himself, protesting how much he had paid for the
Encyclopedia of the Russias
or wondering where he had put the maps of the Middle Roads.

When Sophia looked at her pocket watch again, it was almost eleven-hour. She got to her feet and made her way to the front of the shop. “Mr. Crawford,” she called out when she reached the cashier's box, “can I buy this book on the Papal States?”

“Of course you can, dear,” came the muffled reply. “Just a minute.”

While Sophia waited, she flipped through the booklet displayed on a stand nearby:
Map Vendors in Every (Known) Age
. It was a surprisingly useful little book, containing the addresses of prominent map sellers in New Occident, the Baldlands, the Papal States, and the Russias; there were even some entries for the Closed Empire. Sophia placed it atop the Esparragosa, and as she did so Cornelius finally emerged, huffing and puffing as though he had hauled himself out from the bottom of a volcano.

He made a cursory attempt to straighten the wisps of hair that sprang like antennae from his head. “All right,” he said,
heaving a tremendous sigh; he reached into his vest pocket for a gold monocle with an amber-tinted lens and peered through it at the books. “Fulgencio Esparragosa and
Map Vendors in Every (Known) Age
,” he said, writing down the titles and their prices in a little notebook. As he wrapped the books in brown paper and string, he glanced at her pack and asked, winking, “Planning a trip somewhere?”

Sophia smiled, her excitement getting the better of her. “Perhaps.”

“Very exciting,” Cornelius declared. He always told his customers, with faint regret, that he had never traveled out of Boston; the bookstore kept him too busy. “Well, let me know if you need anything else before you go.”

“Don't I need to pay you?”

“Shadrack has an account with me, dear. He's in here so often he just settles the bill at the end of each month.”

Sophia handed him a pair of notes. “I want to buy these myself,” she said.

“Very well,” he agreed, counting out the change.

“Thank you.” Sophia placed the books in her satchel, beside her notebook and the beaded map.
Now we have everything we need,
she thought with satisfaction.

• • •

A
S
S
OPHIA
CLOSED
the door behind her and the bell ceased its ringing, Cornelius Crawford ambled slowly into the Atlas's back room. His office made the store look tidy. A wooden
chair with a worn cushion stood like a lone small tree in a city of books: towers so high they blocked the window, sagging shelves overpopulated by bound books, leaning stacks that threatened to collapse if nudged the wrong way. Cornelius sat down in the chair with a deep sigh and looked at his visitor, who was perched quietly on one of the more stable book piles.

“Well, that was unexpected,” Cornelius said.

The visitor, a slight young woman who wore a man's buttoned shirt and trousers, tucked her black hair behind her ears and nervously fingered the pendant of her necklace. “She didn't hear me?”

“You were very quiet.”

“Why was she here, Sam?”

Cornelius shrugged. “To buy books on the Papal States. Very natural, I'd say.”

“Yes, but I mean why? It is too coincidental. Ten minutes after I got here?” She shook her head. “I don't like it.”

Sophia would not have recognized her calm, expressionless friend from the Nihilismian Archive. Though Remorse had not changed her appearance, an unrestrained vitality now animated her every word and gesture.

She plunged her hands into her hair and held her head. “You know what this means.”

“It doesn't mean anything, Cassia,” Cornelius said soothingly.

“I hate when this happens.”

“Some coincidences are just coincidences.”

“Sam!” Remorse sprang to her feet and crossed the room, toppling a low stack of books in the process. “You know
better. A coincidence is never a coincidence. Coincidence is how pre-cephalon Ages explain what they don't understand.”

“I'm pretty sure I've seen some real ones,” Cornelius ventured. “Last week, I was looking for a book on dinosaurs, and I found one on parliament politicians from the 1820s.”

“That's not a coincidence, Sam, that's a joke,” Remorse said dismissively. “And really kind of a bad one.”

Cornelius sighed. “Okay. What are you going to do?”

Remorse tapped her front teeth with her forefinger. “Nothing. We have to stick with the plan. We've already moved the container, and I have to get it to Seville. There's no other way.” She took a deep breath and put her hands on her hips. “We shouldn't have meddled this much. I'm afraid we've gone too far.”

—11-Hour 55—

T
HEO
HAD
HAPPILY
distracted Mrs. Clay in the kitchen while Sophia came downstairs and left by the front door, carrying her bulky travel gear. He had spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon in half-pretended idleness, throwing himself repeatedly in the way of Mrs. Clay's housekeeping until she announced, exasperated, that she was off to do the shopping. “I am happy to have you back, Theodore,” she said, “but you have such a talent for inconvenience.” Theo smiled to himself as he watched her leaving with her basket.

He tossed the last few things into his pack, pulled the drawstring tight, and fastened the flap. Shouldering the pack, he bounded down the stairs to the first floor. He was congratulating himself on how smoothly his and Sophia's plan had gone
so far when he heard, to his surprise, Miles and Shadrack arguing at the side door. He pulled off the pack and thrust it under the kitchen table just as Shadrack came in.

“I have already tried,” Shadrack said, scowling.

“He must be somewhere,” Miles insisted.

“Miles.” Shadrack turned to face him. “I beg you to say something useful. Telling me that ‘he must be somewhere' helps me not at all.”

Theo raised his eyebrows. Miles was prone to frequent displays of temper, but Shadrack was rarely as angry as he was now. It was disconcerting to see the old explorer relatively calm while Shadrack seethed. “Who is somewhere?” Theo asked.

Shadrack glanced at him and began to pace. “The prime minister. I have had no word of him since yesterday morning. No one, in fact, has seen him.”

Theo shrugged. “Maybe he needed a holiday?”

“Bligh is not on holiday,” Shadrack snapped. “And he is not at home and he is not at the State House, and I begin to worry that something very serious has happened to him. He would never vanish in the middle—” Shadrack turned on his heel and headed for the library.

“This has something to do with your conversation with Broadgirdle yesterday morning,” Miles accused him.

Theo followed them, both his plans and his pack beneath the kitchen table temporarily forgotten.

“Why is the door to the map room open?” Shadrack asked, pausing at the bookshelf. “Is Sophia here?” he asked Theo.

“She's out.”

“It is really very offensive,” Miles said, beginning to look perturbed. “I take it that you told Bligh, but you will not tell me. What happened? Did Broadgirdle threaten you?”

Shadrack held up his hand. “I am sorry, Miles, but I have told you I will not discuss it.”

“Listen to me, Shadrack. It is not like you to be this obstinate, and while I am the first to admit that I often too readily take to argument, in this case you must see that the provocation is extreme. I demand,” he continued, raising his voice as he followed Shadrack down the stairs, “as probably your closest and certainly your oldest friend, I demand that you tell me
this instant
what happened during that conversation.” All of Miles's huffing indignation was suddenly deflated as he reached the bottom of the stairs and collided directly with the back of his closest and oldest friend. Theo, a few steps above him, gave a small, involuntary gasp.

They all stared at the horror that confronted them: Prime Minister Cyril Bligh sat in one of the chairs, his face frozen in surprise. His jacket was neatly hung on another chair. The black waistcoat he wore shone unnaturally, and the white shirt beneath it was stained dark with blood.

Shadrack leaped forward, insensible of how the congealed blood on the carpet was staining his shoes and the blood on Bligh's body was staining his hands. “Bligh,” he cried. “For Fates' sake, Bligh, answer me!” He put his hands to the man's neck for a pulse.

Miles flew after him, seizing the prime minister's wrist. “He is cold,” he said. “Completely cold.”

Theo's eyes darted around the room, taking it all in. On the table beside the prime minister lay a short knife. The blade was encrusted with blood. The mother-of-pearl handle was perfectly clean. Beside the knife were a blood-spattered heavy cotton robe and a pair of gloves. There were no footprints anywhere. The carpet on the stairs was clean.