Grandmother Pearl sighed. “She lived so much in the dream world, and she had a hard life. She was never very sharp on where ordinary life ended and tragedy began.”
“I should say,” Burr commented.
“But it’s not true, is it?” Sophia asked anxiously. “It hasn’t really happened?”
“Well that’s the strange thing about time in our day and age,” Grandmother Pearl said. “You never know what happened before and what happened after. I really don’t know. My mother always told it as a legend.”
“I don’t understand why that story would be on this map, or why the map would be so important.”
Grandmother Pearl nodded. “I might be wrong, after all. It just sounded similar. These memories could take place almost anywhere. There is no shortage of such destruction.”
Sophia turned the map over gently to still the images, and as she did so she glimpsed something through the glass. She held it before her and peered at the deck, where one of the floorboards seemed to shine as if lit from within. “What is that?” she asked. Without the glass, the floor of the deck once again looked uniform in the dim moonlight.
Burr looked at her curiously. “What?”
Sophia raised the glass again and the floorboard stood out clearly. “There,” she said, pointing. “One of the floorboards seems to have light coming out from behind it.” She put the glass down. “That’s strange. But only when I look at it through the glass.”
“Let me see that,” Burr said, with less than customary politeness. Sophia handed him the glass. “Amazing,” he whispered. “Calixta, look at this.”
Calixta held the glass up and caught her breath.
“What is it?” Grandmother Pearl asked anxiously.
“Seen through the glass,” Burr said slowly, “one of the floorboards appears luminescent.”
“Aceituna’s floorboard?” Grandmother Pearl exclaimed.
“Yes. Captain Aceituna,” Burr said, turning to Sophia and Theo and lowering his voice, “left us all his paper maps and charts. He also left us a map that points to his—what would you call them, Calixta?”
“Emergency funds,” she said, returning the glass to Sophia with a thoughtful expression.
“Buried treasure?” Theo breathed.
“Well, not actually buried,” Burr said. “But yes—treasure. Emergency funds. In case of hostile takeover, he engraved the map in cedar and placed it—face down—in the deck of the ship. It is that floorboard—the one that shines so brightly through your glass, Sophia.”
18
Chocolate, Paper, Coin
1891, June 26: 2-Hour #
We accept ONLY cacao, silver, or Triple Eras bank notes. No stones, glass, or spice will be accepted. Bank notes from New Occident are accepted at a 1.6 exchange rate. To change other currencies see the money changer.
—Vendor’s sign at Veracruz market
IT TOOK ONLY a few experiments to determine why the Tracing Glass illuminated Aceituna’s instructions. Though she examined almost every inch of the Swan through it, Sophia found that only one kind of object shone: maps. The nautical charts that Burr had brought her shone like sheets of hammered gold; the map of the island drawn by Shadrack glowed as if alive with starlight; Calixta’s cabin, the walls papered with maps, seemed flooded with light that shone through a dozen map-sized windows. As a final experiment, Sophia asked Burr to draw a map on a blank sheet of paper while she observed him through the glass. At first, the blank sheet, Burr, and his quill all looked quite ordinary. But the moment the faint line he had drawn became a route, the paper took on a different aspect. When he drew a small compass in the corner, the sheet fairly glowed.
Clearly the glass map, whatever else its contents, illuminated other maps. Sophia pondered the significance of her discovery while Burr, Calixta, and Theo slept in their cabins and Grandmother Pearl sat beside her on the deck, snoring lightly. In most cases, of course, the glass would be redundant: Burr’s nautical charts were clearly nautical charts, and the glass did not make them any easier to read. But if one were looking for a hidden map, Sophia reflected, her mind whirring, the glass might be very useful. What if a glass map was disguised in a window? she thought. Or what if in a whole library there were only three maps? In such circumstances, the Tracing Glass would be invaluable. So tracing means finding, not outlining, she reflected. The multilingual instructions, which had once seemed so strange—“you will see it through me”—now made perfect sense. Anyone who could read would be told the purpose of the glass at first glance.
It brought her no closer to understanding the memories, but the discovery made her reconsider why Shadrack had entrusted the glass to her. Maybe it’s not to help find himbut to help me find another map. A map no one can else can see, perhaps? Is Veressa supposed to help me? Her thoughts drifted, and suddenly she sat up, electrified. She rummaged quietly through her pack and drew out her notebook. Flipping through the pages, she found the drawings she’d made after the confrontation with Montaigne.
All the different pieces of the puzzle were there: the Lachrima from Shadrack’s note, the glass map, Montaigne, and the Nihilismians who traveled with him. There had seemed to be no connection, but suddenly there was, at least for some of the pieces, because she remembered what she had been unable to recall before. Back at East Ending Street, while learning to read maps, she had asked Shadrack about a map of the world, and he had told her about something called the carta mayor: a memory map of the entire world, which he had said was a Nihilismian myth. Could it be that the Nihilismians believed the glass map would show the carta mayor? Maybe the map of the world isn’t really hidden, Sophia thought. Maybe it’s hidden in plain sight. She held the glass up before her and gazed through it at the dark night sky. “You will see it through me,” she whispered. The stars on the other side of the glass winked, fluttered, and stared like thousands of distant eyes.
—6-Hour 37: Port of Veracruz—
THE SWAN COASTED into port early the next morning. The city of Veracruz, eastern entry to the realm of Emperor Sebastian Canuto, gleamed like a white seashell. From the deck of a ship, Veracruz appeared like a jeweled promise; it belied the vast, fragmented landscape that lay beyond it. The cities—Nochtland, Veracruz, and Xela—preserved and even heightened their luster year by year, leaching all the wealth from the surrounding towns and flourishing in a state of exaggerated, heady splendor. Princess Justa, from her perch in the shining castle at the heart of the Canuto empire in Nochtland, could pretend that the entire land enjoyed such luxury. Her father, Emperor Sebastian, who had traveled north to pacify the bands of rebellious raiders, knew better. He understood that beyond the walled cities of the Triple Eras, the empire existed only as a smattering of besieged forts, impoverished towns, and miserable farms surrounded by wild, unexplored terrain. Sebastian had long since abandoned the goal of unifying his empire. He fought the northern raiders now less to subdue them and more to avoid the prospect of returning to a castle that he had come to understand ruled almost nothing. The thought of once again donning the meaningless robes, the glittering crown, the air of courtly gravity, depressed him and filled him with dread. He would leave such illusions to his daughter, to whom they were better suited.