As she watched, the landscape changed. The tracks drew away from the coast and headed inland. Slender maples grew close to the rails, and she could smell the dusty scent of leaves that had stood all day in the sun. The train slowed as it approached the final stop in Connecticut, and Sophia watched the trees thin to reveal a low platform and a small station. Only a handful of people stood waiting. Her worries returned as she saw the travelers’ anxious faces. What would happen if Shadrack somehow returned home after she had ventured into the Baldlands, where Mrs. Clay would be unable to reach her? She felt a gnawing in her stomach. There was nothing she could do now; if Shadrack returned to Boston, he would have to follow her south.
As Sophia fretted, she noticed two men speaking to the conductor by the station house. She could see only their backs, but it was clear that the conductor was afraid. He had pressed himself uncomfortably against the wall and was leaning as far away from them as his caved chest and the bricks would allow. As he listened, he fiddled with his bristly mustache, then adjusted his hat nervously. Suddenly, one of the men turned, surveying the platform, and his companion did the same. Sophia gasped. They were ordinary men, wearing nondescript clothing. But they had long, crescent-shaped scars across their cheeks. “Theo,” she called. “Come look at these two men.” As she spoke, the conductor blew the whistle.
Theo, who had apparently been awake for some time, climbed down from his bunk and joined her at the window, but the men were gone. Sophia exhaled with frustration. “They must have boarded the train. There were two men with scars.” She traced from the corner of her mouth to her ear. “And you said the ones who came to East Ending had scars.”
Theo sat next to her. “Well, if they’re on the train, we’ll probably see them. Unless they get off in New York. It’s probably just a coincidence. No shortage of scars in the world.”
“Yes, that’s true,” she said, not entirely convinced.
She took out her notebook and tried to distract herself by drawing, but this routine, which usually soothed her, made her more anxious: the book was full of Shadrack. The ordinary moments of their shared life—late-night meals after Shadrack’s long days, trips to the Boston museums, discussions about their new purchases from the Atlas Book Shop, scraps of paper with Shadrack’s rendering of Clockwork Cora—seemed heavy with the weight of things lost and irrecoverable. Quoted passages from his writings were scattered everywhere, speaking in a calm and reassuring voice about the way the world was and should be.
Instead, she took out the atlas and began absently thumbing through its pages. Sophia had, of course, read most of it many times before, but the atlas seemed to take on new meaning when she thought of it as a guide to places she might actually visit. The long entry on New York described its wharf and parks and the large, indoor marketplaces. The illustrations captured very little of the rumbling coaches and horses and the smell of fish that Sophia remembered.
She turned to the entry on the Baldlands. They were called the Baldlands, she knew, because of how they were described to the early explorers who ventured south and west from New Occident. “Tierras baldías,” the inhabitants of those places would say, meaning “fallow lands” or “unfarmed lands” in Spanish. But instead of translating the term completely, explorers translated only half, settling for “the baldlands.”
There were three major cities within the Baldlands: Nochtland; the coastal city of Veracruz; and Xela, farther south. Historians posited that all three had emerged from the Disruption as admixtures of three principal Ages: the seventeenth century, as it was known in the old manner of reckoning; an era one thousand years prior to it; and an era one thousand years after it. Small pockets of other Ages existed as well, but the theory of the three eras was well established, and the cities were described collectively as the “Triple Eras.” The people of the Triple Eras followed an old religion that understood time as cyclical; the cycles of time were carried like wrapped bundles on the backs of the gods, who trudged tirelessly with their burdens. They were accommodating gods, accepting sacrifice and tribute and granting indulgences where they could.
Beyond the Triple Eras, the Baldlands were far less cohesive. The man who had proclaimed the Baldlands an empire, Emperor Leopoldo Canuto, had cared little for conquest and exploration. Instead, in the early years after the Disruption, he had set about establishing a magnificent court at the heart of Nochtland, sparing no expense in transforming the chaotic city into a sprawling metropolis of splendors. His son, Emperor Julian, had followed in his footsteps, living in isolation with his courtiers and rarely leaving the city boundaries. During their rules, the remainder of the Baldlands had contentedly remained ungoverned. The collision of disparate Ages had unfolded in thousands of different ways, creating in some places peaceful havens and in others lawless expanses. These last had given the Baldlands their reputation for wildness, and it was true that roving bands of marauders had become powerful and greedy, owning entire towns as a farmer would own acres.
Julian’s son Sebastian was the opposite of his father. Wholly uninterested in exploration for its own sake, he was undoubtedly a conqueror. When his young wife died, leaving him alone with a daughter, he made it his mission to bring the entire empire of the Baldlands into his fold. For the past twenty years, he had sent his soldiers into every corner of the Baldlands, attempting to weed out those who had for so long ignored the rule of law. But Sebastian had found it more difficult than he had expected. He would stamp out one band of raiders only to have another spring up in its place. Meanwhile his daughter, Justa, remained behind, ruling in his stead. The entry in Shadrack’s atlas indicated that the royal family in Nochtland bore the “Mark of the Vine” and not the “Mark of Iron,” terms Sophia had never heard before.
“Have you ever seen Princess Justa?” she asked Theo now.
He looked at her with an expression of amusement. “Never. Not many people have.”
“What does it mean that she has the ‘Mark of the Vine’?”
Theo turned to look out the window. “It’s just a thing they say about family lineage.”
“Like a family crest?”
“Sort of.”
“It says in the atlas that there are more gardens than buildings in Nochtland,” Sophia said. “Are there?”
Theo shrugged. “Sounds possible.”
“You have been to Nochtland, haven’t you?” she asked somewhat acidly.
“Of course I’ve been there. I’ve just never lived there.”
“So if you’re not from Nochtland, where are you from?”
“I’m from the Northern Baldlands.” He folded his hands together. “But I’ve been all over.”
Sophia looked at him intently. “What about your parents? Are they in the northern Baldlands?” She paused. “Don’t you think they’re worried about you?”
“I’m getting hungry.” Theo said abruptly, opening the basket Mrs. Clay had prepared. “Do you want anything?”
Sophia narrowed her eyes. He was ill at ease, which made her more determined to find out why. “Isn’t anyone worried you ended up kidnapped in a circus, or does no one know?”
Theo looked like he wanted very much to say, “None of your business,” but instead he asked, “Is that the man you saw on the platform?”
Sophia turned in her seat. Standing in the corridor and clearly visible through the window of their compartment was a man with two long scars running from each corner of his mouth. “That’s him,” she whispered.