Shadrack shook his head and hunched farther over the desk. As he did so, he dropped his right hand and felt with the scissors for the rope binding his ankle. The woman was still on the other side of the desk. The two scarred Nihilismians stood by the cold furnace, their grappling hooks hanging by their sides. He glanced quickly toward the other end of the chapel and saw a set of double doors that doubtlessly opened out onto the grounds. Then he leaned in close to the glass globe as if examining it. “Your work is impressive, and I admire your cartologic sensibilities—sincerely. But I can’t help you; and even if I could, I wouldn’t.”
He had cut through the ropes binding his right ankle, and he leaned forward even farther to reach his other ankle under the desk. “I can’t help you because I don’t believe in the Chronicles or the carta mayor. And I won’t help you because I have no desire to see the Great Disruption repeated in my lifetime. I want no part of it. My only consolation is that the task you have set yourself is impossible to achieve.” Shadrack cut the ropes on his left ankle and quickly slipped the scissors back inside his sleeve and straightened in the chair.
“Ah!” the woman said, circling to Shadrack’s side of the desk. “Then shall we put your beliefs to the test? If you truly believe the carta mayor does not exist, tell me where the Tracing Glass is. You can prove to me that the Chronicles are nothing but empty poetry.” Shadrack sat in silence, his face expressionless. “I believe if the glass map is not here, there is only one place it can be. With your niece. Sophia.”
“I tell you—all my glass maps were broken on the floor of my workroom.”
The woman placed her gloved hand on Shadrack’s arm—the same arm that concealed the scissors in its sleeve. “I have not told you my name,” she said softly. “You may call me Blanca. Like the white of an unmarked page—of a blank map. Or of white sand. Or of fair, unblemished skin.”
Shadrack looked at her but said nothing. He glanced at the two Sandmen; they appeared lost in thought, considering the globes overhead.
“Sophia has the map, doesn’t she?” Blanca asked. “And all I need is something to persuade her to give it up.”
Shadrack suddenly pushed back his chair, flinging off Blanca’s arm. The scissors flew into the air and soared in an arc, shattering one of the globes. A shower of glass shards and sand rained down over them, but he had already begun running toward the far end of the chapel, racing for the broad doors at the rear. He heard the footsteps of the men behind him and the furious cry from Blanca at the sight of the broken globe.
The broad double doors ahead of Shadrack suddenly flew open and four Sandmen stepped into the chapel. Shadrack ducked to the left and ran toward one of the windows: he could climb onto one of the desks and leap, hopefully with enough strength to break through the stained glass. Then he felt a sudden, painful snag against his leg.
He was pinned to the floor, his chest crushed painfully against the stone, and in a moment they were all upon him. He tasted blood in his mouth as the men hauled him to his feet, wrenching his arms behind his back. The grappling hook had ripped his pant leg, leaving two long welts all the way down his thigh. Only chance had prevented the hook’s prongs from tearing deep into his muscle.
The Sandmen dragged him, struggling, across the chapel floor and back to the chair by the desk. “Bind his left arm tightly,” Blanca said quietly. “Hold his right arm but leave it free.” Shadrack’s shoulders ached as his chest was pinned back and his left hand tied. “And put the bonnet on him. Just the ribbon—I need his eyes open.”
The man standing before him held a small block of wood the size of a bar of soap threaded through with a thin piece of wire. Shadrack clenched his teeth and tucked his chin against his chest. The man standing behind him yanked his head back and hit his windpipe, just hard enough so that Shadrack was forced to cough. Before he could close his mouth, he felt the wooden block between his teeth and the thin wires against his cheeks. Then they were wound together tightly behind his head.
The wire began biting into the corners of his mouth. He knew now how the Nihilismians earned their scars.
“If you don’t fight it, the wire won’t cut you,” Blanca said sweetly. “You are going to write a letter for me.” She set paper and pen before him and leaned in. “Now.”
Shadrack took the pen unsteadily. Blanca had drawn back, but not soon enough; he had seen the face beneath her veil.
11
On the Tracks
1891, June 22: 11-Hour 36
The rail lines had begun as a government-sponsored venture, but private investors soon began to make their fortune laying tracks across New Occident. The idea of a national railway was abandoned, and by mid-century two or three private companies owned every inch of track and every train car. The millionaires of the rail lines became the most powerful individuals in New Occident.
—From Shadrack Elli’s History of New Occident
THOUGH SOPHIA HAD traveled every summer with Shadrack, she had never been farther south than New York nor farther west than the Berkshires, and poring over maps of train routes had not prepared her for the thrill of riding an electric train over long distances.
She felt light-headed as they sped out of Boston on the Seaboard Limited. She and Theo had a compartment for the entire journey to New Orleans; it had a long leather seat and two bunk beds that folded out of the wall, each with starched white sheets. Theo curled up on the top bunk and slept contentedly. Sophia wished she could sleep as well, but she could not even sit still, and she paced from door to window in the tiny wood-paneled compartment, willing herself to lose track of time. Her hand closed around the spool of silver thread in her skirt pocket and she gripped it hard, as if doing so would call the Fates to her side and make the train go faster. To distract herself, she began reviewing the list of things she had brought, consulting the train schedule, and calculating how long it would take to travel from the border to Nochtland.
As they neared Providence, Rhode Island, she opened the window to look out onto the platform. The city spread out before her like a maze of brickwork dotted here and there with white steeples. Like a dark ribbon, the Blackstone Canal wove its way through the brick buildings. Dusty green trees bordered it on either side and surrounded the nearby train station, providing the only shade on the crowded wooden platform. The air smelled of sawdust and canal water. Police officers and station agents scrutinized tickets and identity papers, herding people into different compartments. Foreign families traveling together, lone exiles weighed down by overstuffed baggage and expressions of despondency—they all waited at the platforms alongside ordinary travelers who looked on curiously, sympathetically, or sometimes indifferently. The scene in Providence was repeated an hour later in the lush green flatlands of Kingston, where cows clustered in the occasional shade; everywhere the sense of disquiet was the same. The train left southern Rhode Island and coursed on into Connecticut.
The windows of the railcar were wide open to let in the breeze, and Sophia leaned out to cool off. As the train made its way down the coast, she smelled the salt air and stared out at the small white sails skimming the ocean’s surface. It seemed to her that time had slowed to an unbearable pace. Sophia sighed. I have to make the time pass more quickly, she thought desperately, or this will feel eternal. She put aside all thought of East Ending Street, which she was leaving behind, and of Theo, with whom she had hardly exchanged a word since boarding, and she concentrated on the horizon.