The humid morning air settled over her like a damp rag as the hour slowly dragged on. More people began appearing on the platform, their dusty boots rattling the floorboards in a wearying procession of shuffles and taps. Sophia leaned back against a trunk that someone had left unattended as Theo placidly looked out over the tracks. She closed her eyes, and it seemed to her they’d been closed only a moment when a shout jolted her awake.
Sophia looked up to see the most extraordinary woman striding toward them. Everyone standing on the platform stepped aside as they saw her coming. She was tall and extravagantly dressed in a billowing charcoal-gray silk gown trimmed with lace and a black plumed hat that covered most of her face. Strapped to her narrow waist was a leather belt with a holster and a silver revolver. Her white-gloved hands planted on her hips, she stopped before them; the scent of orange blossoms wafted toward Sophia. “Thought you could take it from under my nose, did you?” she asked with a look of hard-edged amusement. Her smile was not friendly.
Sophia looked up at the woman’s face. She was beautiful; her long, dark hair hung to her waist, and her black eyes glittered. Sophia felt a moment of panic—Mortify is on a train speeding west, so Montaigne sent someone else! She sprang to her feet and Theo joined her. Compared to this commanding woman, she felt very much a child. Her knees and palms were raw from having skidded across the roof of the train, and her skirt—plain striped cotton, even on the best of days—was ripped in more places than one. Her clean clothes, of course, were lost somewhere on a trunk heading west. She balled her fists and tried to wear, at the very least, a dignified expression. “It’s not yours,” she said, in a voice that sounded far less grand than she intended.
The woman laughed. “Is that going to be your defense? Because I don’t see how you hope to explain its contents.”
Sophia contemplated running, and then she looked at the revolver and thought of Shadrack. She swallowed hard and her voice trembled. “Where is my uncle?”
The beautiful woman’s expression abruptly changed, turning pensive. “You’ve misunderstood. I’m not that kind of pirate. And the trunk would make poor ransom,” she said.
“The trunk?” Sophia asked, confused.
The woman gave her a good long look, and then she laughed until her hat shook. When she was through, she gave Theo and Sophia a broad smile. “I believe I’ve misunderstood as well,” she said. “I’m referring to that trunk by your feet. And unless I’m mistaken, you’re referring to something else entirely.”
“You can have the trunk,” Theo told her.
“We just found it here,” Sophia said at the same time.
“Well, sweetheart, my apologies. But I confess to being intrigued. Has your uncle been taken by pirates?” She seemed genuinely curious, and her voice was full of warmth.
“No,” Sophia replied, before Theo could say anything.
The woman raised her eyebrows. “Secret, is it? Well, don’t worry about me; I know all about secrets. I’m Calixta,” she added.
“I’m Sophia. And this is Theo.”
“A great pleasure to meet you. I apologize that you had to see my vicious side first, and so entirely without provocation. Let me make it up to you properly,” Calixta continued, looking at something far in the distance, past Sophia. “Share my compartment, won’t you?”
Sophia followed Calixta’s gaze and saw a moving speck on the horizon; the train was approaching. “Oh, thank you. But we have tickets for benches in the main car.”
Calixta waved a gloved hand. “Bother the main car. I have the largest compartment at the front of the train, and it has far too much room for tiny me. Porter!” she called. A moment later, two men emerged hurriedly from the station house. “Decidedly not real porters,” she said in a lofty aside. “Who leaves a trunk by itself on a platform? But we’ll pretend. And such a pitiful little station, in the middle of nowhere,” she added. “Please bring my other trunks,” she told the men, who jumped to obey.
The moment the train stopped, the doors flew open and the ticket collectors emerged. Calixta walked directly to the front, followed by the porters, and boarded the first car.
“Should we really sit with her?” Sophia asked in a low voice.
Theo shrugged. “Why not?”
“She’s a pirate!”
“She’s harmless. Just a little extravagant.”
“I don’t know,” Sophia said, as they handed their tickets to the ticket collector.
The main car was packed. A woman with five children, three of whom were wailing at the tops of their lungs, was attempting to wrestle her brood onto a single bench. By the window, a heavyset man had rudely commandeered two benches by sitting on one and dropping the muddy boots he’d removed on another. The pungent smell of his socks was already drawing expressions of consternation from the passengers around him. Sleeping here would be impossible.
“Okay,” Sophia said to Theo. “Let’s find her. Don’t tell her anything about the map or Shadrack, though.” They walked through the noisy car and then two others before reaching the front of the train. The left-hand compartment was open, and Calixta was inside, supervising the placement of her trunks.
“There you are! Thank you very much,” she said to the two porters, handing them each a coin from her purse. “Ugh!” she sighed, sitting down abruptly. Her gown ballooned around her. “I can’t wait to escape this miserable swamp and get back to my ship. The air smells like dirt, everything is covered with dust, and the people! Is it me or do they never bathe?” She patted the seat beside her. “Sophia?”
Sophia closed the compartment door and sat down stiffly next to Calixta. Theo, across from them, seemed tongue-tied. “You’re sailing out of New Orleans?” he managed to ask.
“Yes, finally. The Swan will be at the dock—my brother will have it waiting—and then we head out from there.” She began unpinning her hat. “Give me a hand, won’t you?” Sophia succeeded in removing the last pin, and Calixta set her hat on the shelf above the trunks. She smoothed her hair into place as she sat back down. “What a day! And it’s only beginning.” She started pulling off her gloves. “Aren’t you hungry?” She continued removing them as she got up again. “Hello?” she called into the corridor, stepping out of the compartment for a moment. The whistle blew, and the train began rolling forward.
Sophia and Theo exchanged glances. Calixta abruptly reentered, closing the door behind her. “That’s settled, then—breakfast for three. Now,” she said, as the train picked up speed and the breeze whirled in through the open window, “I won’t ask yet about your fascinating uncle or what you insisted wasn’t mine, but perhaps I can ask where you are going?”
“Yes.” Sophia hesitated. “Theo has to get back to the Baldlands, and I’m going to Nochtland.”
“You’re also sailing out of New Orleans, then?”
“We were thinking of riding down to Nochtland from the border,” Theo put in.
“Oh, you don’t want to do that. Takes ages, and you get your horses stolen every other day. You should sail down out of New Orleans to Veracruz. Only a suggestion, of course, but if I were you, I wouldn’t want to stay on land a moment longer.” Calixta rolled her eyes.
“Why were you here?” Sophia asked, with what she hoped sounded like polite interest.
“Oh, I only came to negotiate a new contract with a merchant. Last chance, with the borders closing and all that. I tried to send my brother Burr, seeing as I am the captain, after all, and he is only quartermaster, but he says that I negotiate better. And, well,” she sighed, “my brother is a darling, but it is also true that he rarely seems to land the lucrative contracts I do.” She trilled with laughter. “Nor does he land the proposals! Had I known my trip would result in three highly ridiculous marriage propositions, I would have refused, contracts be damned. One was a banker who insisted on agreeing vehemently with everything I said. Charming, but not so much with his mouth full of food.” She wrinkled her nose delicately. “Under the mistaken impression that he would benefit financially from marrying me, no doubt. Then a lawyer who has quietly married and buried no fewer than three wives already; rather suspicious, no? And, lastly, the merchant’s son, who almost certainly proposed only to enrage his father. How well he succeeded! Men may irritate women entirely by accident, but I believe they infuriate one another wholly by design.” Calixta laughed merrily, fanning herself with her gloves. “Truly,” she said, with a hint of pride, “I am always far more trouble than I’m worth.”