It was some time past sixteen-hour on Sophia’s watch when she saw something on the road ahead of them. At first she thought it was only a group of travelers, but as they approached she realized that it was many travelers—hundreds of travelers—all stalled on the road. They had reached the outer limits of Nochtland. She could just barely make out the high profile of the city walls through the heavy rain and the falling darkness.
“They check everyone who comes in through the gates,” Mazapán explained with a sigh. “I’m afraid we’ll be here for hours. I’d forgotten the eclipse festivities are taking place in a few nights. Everyone from miles around has come to see them. They occur so rarely, and the astronomers say this will be the first total lunar eclipse since the Great Disruption.”
Sophia was too tired to engage him in conversation. She could see the sails of a boldevela far ahead of them in the long line. Calixta and Burr slowed their pace to ride alongside the cart, and Theo rode up briefly. “I’m going to see how long the line is,” he called out. Before anyone could say anything, he had spurred his horse and taken off. Within seconds, he was swallowed up by the darkness.
“Why is he checking the line?” she asked Mazapán uneasily.
“Who knows? Long is long. We’ll be here at least until nine-hour. Twenty-hour, for you,” he added, with a smile. “What a relief that my day is eleven hours shorter. I won’t have as long to wait.”
Sophia knew he was trying to distract her. “That’s not how it works,” she said with a faint smile, staring into the rain. Ahead of them were a large party of traders traveling on foot. They shuffled along slowly, hunched under their cloaks. As the line inched forward, Sophia saw Theo returning. He rode up to her side of the cart, and she realized that his expression had grown even more strained. He was pale, his eyes tense with anxiety. “What is it?” she asked immediately, thinking of the raider from the market. “Did you see someone in the line?”
Theo leaned toward her. “I said I’d see you safely to Nochtland, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” Sophia said, even more uneasy now.
“Well, we’re here,” he said, his voice hard. “You kept your word, and I kept mine.” He leaned in farther, pulled her face toward his, and gave her a rough, awkward kiss on the cheek. “’Bye, Sophia.” He turned the horse away and galloped off in the opposite direction, back toward Veracruz.
Sophia stood up. “Theo!” she shouted. “Where are you going?” For a moment it seemed to her that he turned to look over his shoulder, and then he was gone.
“Let him go, Sophia,” Mazapán called up to her. He eased her back onto the seat. “I’m sorry, child, but you’re getting soaked. Take this cloak and try to keep warm.” He put his arm around her. “He rode away,” Mazapán shouted over the rain, by way of explanation, to Burr and Calixta, who were trying to ask what had happened. “No, he didn’t say why—he just rode away,” he repeated.
“Just like that,” Sophia said emptily.
PART III ENTRAPMENT
21
The Botanist
1891, June 28: 5-Hour 04
According to pages unearthed in an abandoned storeroom near the western coast, there existed at one point in time a continuous city stretching along the Pacific from the thirtieth to the fiftieth latitude. The date of the pages is unknown, and only very fragmented segments of the Pacific City, as the pages term it, remain.
—From Veressa Metl’s Cultural Geography of the Baldlands
THE CITY OF Nochtland stretched for miles along the floor of a wide valley. Protected by its high walls, it was more an island than a city, not only because it was crisscrossed by waterways, but also because its inhabitants rarely ventured outside. Traders shuttled back and forth to Veracruz, scholars traveled south to the universities in Xela, and adventurers journeyed north to the wild lands on the Pacific coast. But otherwise the people of Nochtland stayed within its walls, claiming that anything and everything they could ever want lay somewhere in its web of narrow streets and vast gardens. It was a wealthy city, where cacao, bank notes, and crown-issued silver passed hands easily. It was a cosmopolitan city, because people from many different Ages had heard of its beauty and gone to live there. And it was a generous city, to those with the Mark of the Vine.
Nochtland itself seemed to bear the Mark of the Vine. The outer walls were covered with climbing milkweed, balloon vines, morning glories, and bougainvillea. From a distance, the flowering mass appeared almost a living thing: a sleeping creature sprawled out at the end of a long road.
Princess Justa Canuto of the grass-green hair would have banned metal, that despised substance, if she could, but without it the city would cease to function. So, with special dispensation, for which the citizens laboriously applied, the carefully prescribed use of metal was permitted: nuts and bolts, harness fixtures, locks and keys, buckles, iron nails. The Nochtland attorneys grew rich shepherding such applications through the courts. Of course, the royal family had no such constraints, and some people complained bitterly that while they waited two years for a permit to own a steel-wire embroidery needle, the very gates of Nochtland, imperfectly hidden by vines, encased the city in pure wrought iron.
The travelers waited all night in the rain, and when they finally reached the gates of Nochtland Sophia was fast asleep. She had stayed awake late, staring blindly into the pouring rain, hearing Theo’s last words and feeling the slight pressure of his lips against her cheek, until her whole mind and body went numb. Finally she fell asleep against Mazapán’s shoulder. She awoke briefly in the middle of the night to a dark sky and saw that the guards at the gate—tall shapes dressed in long, hooded capes—were inspecting Mazapán’s cart. Then she drifted again into an uneasy sleep, opening her eyes only when Mazapán gently shook her shoulder. “We’re here, Sophia,” he said. “Wake up. You will want to see the city at dawn—there is no better time.”
Sophia sat up drowsily and looked around. As she surfaced from sleep, the sense of frozen numbness persisted. Calixta and Burr rode only a few feet ahead of the cart; the gates were just behind them. The thought of Theo slipped through her mind like a tiny, silvery fish through icy water: briefly there and then gone. Lifting her head, she looked around for her first view of Nochtland. She had anticipated her arrival with such excitement, but now she felt nothing.
The rain had stopped, leaving only thin, jagged clouds that turned blue with the dawn. The cobblestone streets still shone darkly. Chimes tinkled all around, as if engaged in murmuring conversation. The cart horses plodded slowly down a long, straight road lined with trees that scattered drops of rain and filled the morning air with the scent of lemon blossoms. Behind the trees, high stone walls and even taller trees beyond them spilled out from the city’s enclosed gardens. Some of the trees were so broad and full that they seemed to crowd the houses, and Sophia noticed that one of the massive trunks was encircled by a set of stairs that led upward to a gabled house set high in the branches.
She could hear water everywhere. A fountain in the wall to her right disgorged a gurgling stream from the mouth of a stone fish; spigots in the high garden walls spewed rainwater onto the cobblestones. The cart rolled over a bridge spanning a long canal; it stretched out on either side, bordered by low walls and long gardens. Sophia caught a glimpse of the innumerable red-tiled roofs of the houses along the canal as they crossed. Then the road narrowed; on either side, the stone walls were dotted with low doors and closed wooden shutters. The tree houses behind them were curtained and quiet. All Nochtland was still sleeping.