31
The Lined Palm
1891, July 1: 2-Hour 05
The dungeons are from an another period, likely the earliest of the Triple Eras. Soil sampling from the underground vaults of the imperial palace in Nochtland suggests that the extensive subterranean architecture dates to several hundred years before the topsoil upon which the palace is built. In other words, the visible structure of the palace, which has been in place since the Great Disruption, belongs to a different age than do its foundations.
—From Veressa Metl’s “Local Soils: Implications for Cartology”
YEARS BEFORE BLANCA knew of the glaciers’ advance, she had sought to enrich her railway company by extending the track south through New Occident’s Indian Territories and all the way to Nochtland. Princess Justa, unsurprisingly, looked favorably upon the investor who promised to connect the isolated capital with the wealthy cities to the north. Over time, Blanca had proven herself to be more than a match for the insular monarch, easily securing a monopoly on the railroad route and then persuading her that a mere weirwind was moving north.
But it was no weirwind that sped toward Nochtland under the shadowed light of the eclipsed moon. What had begun as an imperceptible movement far away in Tierra del Fuego had accelerated day by day into a rapid, erratic progress that left little time for flight. The glaciers had passed Xela and were making their way north, obliterating everything that lay in their path.
A jagged border divided the vast plains and mountains of the Baldlands from the gleaming Southern Snows. Where the two Ages met, a brilliant light, wild and unpredictable as a lightning storm, pierced the night air. All who saw it fled in terror, and only a few who glimpsed the distant flashes on the horizon understood what they meant: to see the lights was to have already waited too long.
Justa’s prisoners had been returned to the glass-shard pit in the depths of the Nochtland palace; Sophia, Theo, and Shadrack had been forced to join them. Blanca had again fooled the princess, this time with a story about an elaborate conspiracy by the Mark of Iron, hatched in the Indies and executed with the assistance of palace insiders. Justa’s suspicious mind accepted the tale without hesitation, and she placed the captives entirely in Blanca’s power.
At first, amidst reunions and urgent conversation, the prisoners hardly noticed the walls around them. Shadrack described his capture, Blanca’s ambitions for the carta mayor, the long voyage south, and his thwarted attempt to escape. Sophia told him everything that had happened since she had discovered him missing in Boston. And Veressa related how Martin’s silver leg had been detected when one of the guards’ dogs had sniffed it out; Burr had impulsively drawn his pistol, and they had been thrown into the dungeons immediately. But once Theo had repeated the rumors of the Lachrima moving north, and once Shadrack had explained that their advance doubtlessly resulted from the Southern Snows’ rapidly encroaching border, a shocked silence overtook them. Nothing, it seemed, would stop the Ice Age from inexorably erasing everything in its path, creating and then driving a multitude of Lachrima before it.
Only Sophia was not downcast. She leaned against Shadrack’s shoulder while he spoke with Veressa, indifferent to the packed dirt floor and the somber half-darkness. The elation that came with being reunited with her uncle, Theo, and the others buoyed her, and their resigned faces only filled her with determination. She could not believe that they had traveled so far merely to be engulfed by glaciers. The Fates have left us with enough, she thought, clutching her watch and the spool of thread in her pocket, and we have to make the most of it. Her mind raced ahead to the danger that awaited. She could not imagine the advent of the Southern Snows, but the image of countless Lachrima fleeing the site of their erasures was vivid. She shivered. Seeing Blanca’s mutilated face had been horrible enough.
“Tell me again why her face is like that,” she said to Shadrack, who had paused in his conversation.
“You mean why it’s scarred?” She nodded. “You remember Veressa’s story of our visit to Talisman’s house, all those years ago? As I said, I realized as soon as I saw her that Blanca was the Lachrima he kept imprisoned there.”
“Yes. But why did he cut her face?”
Shadrack shook his head. “The man had been driven mad. He believed he could somehow cut through her skin to find her face underneath.”
“The poor wretches,” Veressa murmured. “Both of them.”
As she spoke, a trio of guards appeared at the edge of the pit and began lowering the wooden ladder. The prisoners looked up expectantly. “Only the girl is to come up,” said one of the guards. The other two held their spears aloft, as if to enforce his command. “The girl named Sophia.”
“She’s not going without me,” Shadrack called up.
“Only the girl.”
“I’ll be fine, Shadrack,” Sophia said. “We don’t have a choice anyway.”
“Send her up,” the guard called again.
“She’s right, Shadrack.” Veressa took his hand and pulled him aside. “Let her go.”
Sophia began carefully climbing the wooden rungs, eyes fixed on her hands, not daring to look at the sharp glass shards inches away. When she reached the top, the guards swung her up by the arms. She caught a brief glimpse over her shoulder of the forlorn group clustered at the bottom of the pit, and the sight brought a knot to her throat.
The guards walked her back through the cavernous room and then the deserted servants’ quarters. Emerging onto a vast stone courtyard, Sophia felt her eyes drawn upward to the peculiar light in the sky. The mottled face of the pale moon was almost hidden, as if by a dark veil. Sophia was surprised to hear music and laughter in the distance—the festivities for the eclipse, which seemed as if it had occurred days earlier.
The feeling of unreality continued when they entered a set of apartments at the rear of the palace, overlooking the gardens. The airy opulence took Sophia’s breath away. Carpeted with pale yellow petals, the main room was lit by tall glass candle-lamps that cast a flickering patchwork of golden light and dark shadows. Clusters of white flowers draped over the furniture emitted a heavy, sweet smell, and strings of clear glass bells hung in the open windows. Their quiet tinkling reminded Sophia of Mrs. Clay.
But it was not Mrs. Clay who awaited her. Blanca stood by one of the windows, her veil once again covering her face. “Leave her with me,” she curtly told the guards. “You may wait outside.” The guards left Sophia near a pair of brocaded chairs.
Blanca settled herself in one of the chairs and motioned Sophia into the other. Faint music through the closed windows could not distract Sophia from the image of the scarred face she had seen in the dungeon; she stared at the veil, unable to think of anything but what lay beneath.
Then in one fluid motion Blanca lifted it. Sophia was once again shaken by the gruesome face, where the scars were so numerous they made a mass of muddled flesh. “That’s right,” Blanca said softly. “Count them. Count them, and imagine the pain they cost me, and then imagine how little now it costs me to pain others. You should know that, before you decide to resist my will with a child’s conception of right and wrong.” She said these words sweetly, as if promising Sophia something wonderful. “What have you known of pain? Nothing.”
The pain that Blanca described was genuine—that was clear—and she had indeed suffered more than Sophia could ever know. As she forced herself to look at the scars, Sophia felt her terror ebb, replaced by a wave of sympathy for the creature who sat before her, first robbed of her precious memories and then burdened with unspeakable new ones.