They had been twins, two children among seven. Their mother had been the daughter of a pirate captain. Their father was the first mate of the infamous Typhoon. For years they sailed together, along with their growing family, until the captain of the Typhoon, in his zeal to maintain his ship’s reputation, attacked an ambitious rival. The battle was long and bitter, and when it ended the ships were nothing more than burnt shells.
Calixta and Burr, less than a year old at the time, lay together in their baby basket and drifted on the charred remains all the way to shore. Grandmother Pearl was one of the Typhoon’s few survivors, and though the fires caused her to lose her sight, she stayed with the basket and protected the infants with all her remaining strength.
It was Grandmother Pearl who raised them, and it was she who chose the Swan, the ship sailed by kindly old Captain Aceituna. Though Aceituna called himself a pirate, he had grown cautious in old age, and he sailed only the safer routes. He dedicated himself to shipping the rubber tapped in the southern Baldlands to the United Indies and New Occident, where the material was used to make Goodyears, boots, and other valuable commodities. The “weeping wood” grown on the outskirts of the Triple Eras had made many people, including Aceituna, quite rich.
Of course the tragedy of their family’s death hung over Calixta and Burr, but Grandmother Pearl and the others on the Swan made life for the two children as happy as they could. When Aceituna retired, leaving the ship in their care, Calixta and Burr vowed that the Swan would never become like the Typhoon. They did not aim for greatness; they aimed for prosperity. The Swan never attacked without provocation. The Morrises laughed good-naturedly when pirates from other ships mocked them as the “polite pirates.” “Better polite than dead,” Burr always replied. “Besides,” he would sometimes add, “why look for a fight when the best fights always come to me?” Calixta kept track of the routes sailed by other pirates and mapped the Swan’s path to prevent unexpected confrontations.
On her second night aboard, Sophia had occasion to study the ship’s nautical charts, and it gave her the opportunity she’d been waiting for. She had already decided to ask Burr and Calixta for help in reaching Nochtland. She had no choice, but even if she had been able to get there without them, she would have asked. The way that Burr had helped her on the dock in New Orleans and the fact that Calixta had saved her pack when she easily could have either left it or taken it for herself had paved the way. Grandmother Pearl’s kindness convinced her further. The pirates clearly had nothing to do with the Sandmen and Montaigne, and it could only help, she decided, to tell them what had happened to Shadrack.
She sat on the deck surrounded by lanterns, poring over the charts and weather maps that Burr had brought from his cabin. He and Calixta were a few paces away, attempting to teach Theo the rudiments of sword-fighting. Grandmother Pearl sat listening to them with a smile.
“Molasses, don’t stand there facing me like you’re asking to be skewered,” Burr counseled. “Turn your body sideways.”
“It’s heavy,” Theo protested, pacing backward with the sword in both his hands. “I’d rather just use a revolver.”
“And lazy to top it off,” Burr said, advancing toward him and rolling his eyes at Calixta. “Calixta’s half your size and she wields that sword you’re holding like one of her hat pins.”
“Half his size?” she exclaimed, whirling on her brother and disarming him with the wooden pole she held. “What do I look like to you, a fat fish?”
“Fish aren’t nearly as vain as you are, dearest,” Burr replied, dodging the pole and rolling across the deck to retrieve his sword. “And they don’t look as charming in ruffled petticoats,” he conceded, turning back to Theo. “Use your other hand,” he said, “the one you apparently like to use as a dartboard.”
Theo grimaced and passed the sword to his scarred hand. “I’m just saying, a revolver’s a lot easier.”
Burr quickly loosened a length of rope near him and Theo looked up, too late, and was trapped beneath a sprawling fishing net. “Agh!” he shouted, dropping the sword with a clatter and struggling against the knotted ropes.
“Pistol wouldn’t do much for you now, would it, Molly?”
“We just bought that net last month,” Calixta complained.
“He’s not going to cut through it. Look at him.” Burr chuckled as Theo fought to disentangle himself. “What were you saying about fat fish?”
Sophia, who had been entirely absorbed with the charts she was studying, suddenly let out a gasp. “Oh!” she exclaimed, holding up a paper map. “This is Shadrack’s!”
“Who, dear?” Grandmother Pearl asked.
Sophia collected herself. “My uncle, Shadrack Elli. He made this map.”
“Did he, now?” Burr said with interest. He and Calixta peered over her shoulder. “Ah, yes! Quite a map, that one. This island,” he said, pointing, “is so remote that most people have never even heard of it. Only pirates ever go there. And yet this map is incredibly exact. Every stream, every rock—it’s remarkable.”
“Yes. It’s a lovely map,” Sophia agreed, gazing down at the fine lines drawn in her uncle’s familiar hand.
“How does he do it? He’s never been there, I’m sure.”
“I don’t really know,” she admitted. Shadrack was an exceptional cartologer, of course, but even with all that she knew of his methods, there were many that still eluded her. “He probably talked to an explorer. That’s how he makes a lot of his maps.”
“But with this degree of precision?”
“He’s good at that. If you describe something to him, he can make a perfect map of it.”
Calixta shook her head. “But people never know entirely what they see. They always forget things or miss them. Are all his maps like this?”
“Well,” Sophia replied, hesitating, “he really has all kinds of different maps.” She paused a moment longer and then slowly reached into her pack. “In fact, this map he left me is very different. I still haven’t been able to make sense of it.” Sophia drew out the glass map, which she had left awake. Its etched lines shone faintly. “You see, Shadrack didn’t run off with an actress. He would never do something like that,” she said, giving Theo a scathing look just as he emerged from beneath the fishing net. “He was kidnapped. He left a note telling me to find a friend of his in Nochtland, and he left me this. The men in New Orleans—the Sandmen. This is what they were after.”
Burr gave her a keen look while Calixta sat down beside her.
“It’s a glass map,” Sophia said. “Have you ever seen one?”
Calixta and Burr shook their heads. “They won’t have heard of it,” Theo said. “They’re common in the Baldlands, but nowhere else.”
Burr raised his eyebrows. “Can we take a look?” She nodded, and the two joined her.
“Describe it for me, will you?” Grandmother Pearl whispered.
“It’s a sheet of glass,” Sophia said, “that in the moonlight becomes covered with writing. Most of it in other languages.”
“Here it says in English You will see it through me,” Burr said.