The Crimson Skew (22 page)

“What does Nosh say?” Sophia asked as they moved on.

“He says he misses winter and that the old one is kind to send us this summer snow.” Bittersweet shook his head ruefully. “I wish I could agree with him.”

T
HE WAREHOUSES
STOOD
side by side near the water, and the open door of one gave Shadrack hope. An open door indicated less concealment, and less concealment meant less danger. The warehouses were brick, four stories high, with dusty windows. No sign or nameplate indicated their purpose. When a man in a checked vest stepped outside to pack a pipe, Shadrack decided to make his move.

He approached the man directly and raised a hand in greeting. To his surprise, the man recognized him. “Minister Elli!”
he said amiably. A heavy mustache and sallow cheeks greeted him beneath a brimmed hat.

Shadrack searched his memory, but he could not place the man's face. “Good morning. How are you?” he asked noncommittally.

“Very well, Mr. Elli. Always glad to see the Minister of Relations with Foreign Ages. Excuse me”
—
he corrected himself—“and War Cartologer. You won't know me, sir, but I certainly know you. Ben Ferguson, at your service. All of us here are very proud to work for you.”

A confused Shadrack shook the man's offered hand.

Ben had tucked his unsmoked pipe into the pocket of his vest when he saw Shadrack approaching. Now he gestured to the open door of the warehouse with a wide smile that showed a row of tobacco-stained teeth. “Would you like to see how the work is proceeding, Mr. Elli?”

“Please call me Shadrack, Ben. As for the work—that's the reason I've come,” Shadrack said as he struggled to make sense of the unexpected reception.

“Excellent!” Ben said, with genuine excitement. “Come in. Everyone will be delighted to meet you.”

Shadrack followed Ben into a vast room that ran the length of the building. Wooden crates were stacked high, making tidy aisles. They stretched from one wall to another. “Here's the storeroom,” Ben said, gesturing expansively to the crates. “Everything packed and ready to go. We keep an inventory here on a peg by the door, so every crate is accounted for. We have one hundred awaiting distribution at this very moment.
Not a one has gone missing, you'll be glad to know.”

“Very impressive,” Shadrack said, a sense of unease simmering in his stomach.

“Through here we connect to the other building,” Ben said, winding his way through the crates. At the far end of the aisle was an open door that led to a narrow alley, and Shadrack followed Ben across the alley into the neighboring warehouse. Here there was more activity. On benches beside long tables, arranged all through the room, men and women sat hunched over their work. They seemed to be sewing. At a table near the front entrance, four women were minutely inspecting what looked to Shadrack like leather pouches.
Canteens?
he wondered. “We know how important it is to make these well,” Ben said. “You'll find we have very high standards, Mr. Elli. Very high. No need to worry for New Occident troops on our account.”

“I'm glad to hear it,” Shadrack said, latching on to this clue.
Equipment for the troops,
he thought.
Of course—the masks Broadgirdle ordered.

“Over here we inspect the finished gear,” Ben said, guiding him to the table where the four women worked. “Would you like to try one on?”

“Why not?”

Ben grinned toothily. “This is Minister Shadrack Elli,” he said to the women, who all stood to nod and shake hands with Shadrack, seeming pleased and a little bashful in his presence. “He's going to try one on himself.”

“Try this one, sir,” one of the women said, handing him the
leather mask. “I just looked it over, and it's in fine shape.”

“Thank you.” Shadrack took the mask in hand. It was untanned leather with a strap at the neck. He pulled it on, fumbling more than he wished to with the awkward opening. Finally, it rested snugly on his head. He looked out at Ben through green glass eyepieces. A patch of cloth at his mouth and nose made every breath taste of starched cotton and charcoal. Ben and the four women eagerly awaited his verdict. “Very effective,” Shadrack said, with what he hoped was enthusiasm.
And unbearably warm,
he thought, pulling it off. He handed it back to Ben.

“So glad to hear it, Mr. Elli,” Ben said, beaming. The women looked delighted. “So glad,” he repeated. “It's a relief to know that all these months of work have been worthwhile.”

Something in Shadrack's unsettled mind fell into place, and the sense of unease blew open, filling him with sudden panic. “All these months?” he echoed, before he could check his words.

“Certainly, sir. We began in March, didn't we?” Ben looked at the women for confirmation.

“That's right, March,” they agreed.

“As you ordered, sir, correct?” Ben added, searching Shadrack's face. “The instructions came directly from your office.”

Shadrack looked at their anxious expressions in silence, his mind working quickly with an anxiety of its own.
From my office? Broadgirdle started this in March? But that means he had these
masks made before he was prime minister. Before the war started. Before Bligh was murdered! Before any of it.

It could only mean that Broadgirdle had planned everything in advance: not only the murder and the war, but the crimson fog itself and the means to protect New Occident troops from its effects.
This has been months in the making,
he said to himself, aghast.

Abruptly, too late, he realized that he'd made a mistake. He should never have pretended to know what was happening at the warehouses. Now it would seem to Ben and everyone he had met that he was, in fact, complicit in the making of these masks. And whoever was complicit in making the masks was complicit in planning the war. Without intending to, he had made it seem as if he, Shadrack Elli, had indeed been planning this all along.

It's exactly what Broadgirdle intended,
Shadrack realized, stunned.
And it's exactly why I am still the Minister of Relations with Foreign Ages. So that I can be made accountable for all of it.

N
OSH KNEW EVERY
inch of the terrain, and he had a stopping point in mind for every rest, every meal, and every overnight stay. Sophia learned why the Eerie were so impossible to find: they all lived hidden in plain sight.

On the first night they stayed with an Eerie named Lupine, whose burrow of a home was carved into a mounded hill. Lupine asked them nothing about their journey, learning everything quickly from Nosh, but she told them what she had seen of the war, she showed them how the ash had nearly ruined her hives, and she gave them enough food to last for days: blackberry cake and apple bread and hard cheese and honey.

On the second night they rested with Pruce, whose tree house overlooked a clearing surrounded by conifers that he said had reminded his forebears of the Red Woods left behind on the western shores. As they finished their meal, it began to rain, and they watched with relief from Pruce's windows as the water washed away the gray ash that had coated the trees. Sophia was glad for the moss-covered roof that absorbed the rainfall like a sponge. The air turned unseasonably cool, and Pruce lit his wood stove and sat in silence with them, listening as the wind and rain tussled with the trees.

On the third night they stayed with Lichen, who made his home in a deserted quarry. They arrived late, just as the sun was setting, and Sophia was beginning to droop over Nosh's neck. They passed through a narrow opening between two boulders, and suddenly a hooded figure appeared in their path. Sophia started. “Nosh, Bittersweet,” a man's voice said cordially, and she relaxed. The man reached up to stroke Nosh's nose.

“Good evening, Lichen. This is Sophia. Thank you for meeting us,” Bittersweet said.

“Not at all,” Lichen replied. “The path can be difficult in the darkness.” He led them in silence along the edge of the quarry, until at the far end they reached an opening in the earth—a dark tunnel. He lit a torch that illuminated a clean stone passageway. “Nosh can rest here,” he said, patting the moose's neck. He helped Sophia down from Nosh's back, and she caught a glimpse of a quiet face and long black hair beneath the hood.

Sophia and Bittersweet followed Lichen down the short
tunnel to where a stone stairway wound upward. At the top, a house of stone with wide windows overlooked the quarry. Sophia walked toward the glass, awed. “It's filled with water!” she exclaimed. The dark pool was just visible in the faint moonlight.

Lichen had removed his hood, and he joined her at the window. “Yes—it fills with rain. It has a strange hue now, thanks to the ashfall we had.” He turned toward the room behind them. “Please make yourselves at home.”

Mismatched chairs stood around a woolen rug. Sophia sank into a nest-like chair padded with pillows. Her legs ached from riding; she wanted to curl up and sleep for a week. At the windowless back of the room, a long worktable was covered with the elements of a half-cooked meal. Lichen picked up where he had left off, cutting vegetables and dropping them into an iron pot.

“No luck yet, then?” Lichen asked Bittersweet.

Sophia was beginning to grow used to the Eerie style of conversation, where most of what transpired took place in silence. “No luck,” Bittersweet replied. He sat down on the floor and threw himself back against a heavy pillow.

“Nosh seems less discouraged.”

“Nosh is an optimist,” Bittersweet said dryly, “for reasons I cannot fathom.”

Lichen gave a slight chuckle. He finished what he was doing and carried the pot to the woodstove, covering it tightly before joining them on the woolen rug.

“And what about you, Sophia?” Lichen asked, his eyes bright. “You are also on a search.” His face was worn from age, but his expression was youthful, even mischievous, and he moved with the agility of a much younger man. Sophia noticed that his hands were callused from heavy work, and she wondered how much of the house had been hewn by hand.

“Yes, I am also searching—I have been for some time.”

“And your search takes you to Oakring.”

“We follow Nosh's orders,” Bittersweet said wearily, closing his eyes. “Why he wants to go to Oakring now is beyond my understanding.”

Lichen smiled. “I suspect Nosh knows best, as he always does.” He rose to check the contents of his pot, which was beginning to fill the room with the scent of stewing vegetables, and when he returned he asked Sophia, “Has Bittersweet told you how Oakring came to be?”

Sophia shook her head. “I know nothing about it, other than the location, which I have seen on my map.”

“Ah!” Lichen said, pleased. “Then I can tell you the story.”

Bittersweet, his eyes still closed, commented, “Sophia likes stories.”

Though Sophia understood in principle how Bittersweet could know things about her so easily, she still found it unnerving. That very morning, as they rode through a patch of forest, Bittersweet had pointed to a stone stained with moss and water: “It looks like a map, doesn't it?” he had asked, voicing her thought.

“I do like stories,” agreed Sophia.

“So do I.” Lichen smiled. “And this is a good one. It is about two people who fell in love many decades ago. The woman, Orli, had the Mark of the Vine, and the man, Baer, had the Mark of Iron. Their families were horrified at the affection between them, and forbade them to be together. So they planned to run away. But on the very first day of their journey, they were stopped on the road by an old woman, who claimed to be a diviner. She warned them that if they stayed on their intended path, they would come to ruin. Orli and Baer asked what they could do, for they had no wish to return to their families and be divided from one another forever.

“‘The trouble,' the old woman said, ‘is that one of you is rooted and one of you is rootless, and if you do not reckon with the difference, you will never be at peace. Those with the Mark of Vine are rooted—their great power is that they draw upon the earth, but their great weakness is that they have difficulty uprooting. Those with the Mark of Iron are rootless—their great power is that the iron in their bones guides them like a compass, but their great weakness is that they have difficulty staying in one place. If you travel together now, Orli will always want to stay, however dangerous or inhospitable the place may be, and Baer will always want to go, however ideal it may be.'

“‘Then what are we to do?' Orli asked.

“‘You must part ways and reach your destination by different paths.' Orli and Baer looked at one another, dismayed, but
they recognized themselves in the old woman's descriptions, and they nodded their assent. ‘Take this bell,' the diviner said to Orli, ‘and take this acorn,' she said to Baer. ‘When the bell rings in your hand, Orli, you will have arrived. And when the acorn sprouts, Baer, you will have arrived.'

“So the two went their separate ways. Baer, though he missed Orli greatly, was happy to wander, and he almost forgot about the acorn that sat in his pocket. As he traveled wherever his iron bones led him, he told his tale to everyone he encountered. ‘Orli and I will found a new place,' he said to them, ‘where those who are outcast elsewhere are welcome.' And so earnestly and warmly did he describe his destination that people of all kinds began to follow him.

“Orli suffered greatly, for she had no wish to wander. But the bell the diviner had given her urged her onward, for whenever she rang it, she seemed to hear a distant ring—not in her hand, but just on the other side of the hill, or just beyond that patch of trees. She went on in search of the sound, hoping with each step that the bell would ring in her hand. And when she encountered people along the way, she told them of her quest, and she described with longing the place where they would finally arrive to find safety and quiet and rootedness. Many who heard her were moved, and they chose to go with her, so that by the seventeenth month of her journey she traveled with almost thirty people.

“It was summer, and Orli had journeyed far north—almost to the Eerie Sea. She had arrived at the edge of a forest where
a great oak tree threw its branches outward, and beneath the oak a busy group of strangers labored, clearing small trees and building foundations and gathering stones for walls. Orli rang the bell, and this time it rang in her hand: a high, pure voice announcing that her journey had ended. Then one of the group beneath the oak tree stepped forward. It was Baer. The great oak tree was the tree that had sprung from the acorn he carried, and the bell announced to them both that they were home.

“And that was the founding of Oakring,” Lichen said, rising to his feet. “It has always been a haven for outsiders: people who find themselves unsuited to life anywhere else. But it is also known for being a place where people of great differences—the Mark of Iron, the Mark of the Vine—can be reconciled. You may not know that the man who brokered peace after New Akan's rebellion was from Oakring.”

“Was he?” Sophia exclaimed. “No, I didn't.”

“A place for peacemakers, they say.” Lichen ladled the stew he had made into wooden bowls and brought them over to the rug.

“Thank you,” Sophia said. The stew smelled of sweet corn and squash.

Bittersweet sat up and took his bowl eagerly. “Thank you, Lichen.”

“There are even some Elodeans who live there,” Lichen went on, watching his guests eat for a moment before picking up his own spoon. “Most of us avoid such crowded places—much too loud—but even among Elodeans there are outcasts.”

Bittersweet raised his eyebrows. “Even among Elodeans? I would have said we are all outcasts. And some among us . . .” He looked at Lichen meaningly.

Lichen nodded.

Sophia followed their exchange of glances. “What? Some among you what?”

“Some outcasts are too far beyond the pale, even for Oakring.”

“What does that mean?” Sophia persisted.

Lichen and Bittersweet ate in silence for a moment, both staring into their bowls. Finally Bittersweet raised his head. “No one likes to speak of it. But there were three Elodean sisters, some years ago, who took refuge in Oakring. We had cast them out.” He shook his head. “You should tell the story, Lichen. I was not even alive then.”

Lichen had grown somber. “I'm afraid there is little I can tell. The people in Oakring may tell you more. We cast them out for wanting to use their gifts in destructive ways. You understand—to cast out an Elodean does not mean to remove them from a place, since we all lived scattered.”

“Then how are they cast out?”

“They can no longer call themselves Elodean.”

Sophia put down her spoon. “How terrible.”

A flash of grief crossed Lichen's face. “Yes. We did not make the decision lightly. The sisters took refuge in Oakring. But, not long after—and not entirely to our surprise—the people of Oakring also cast them out. In fact, the three sisters are the only people ever to be cast out of Oakring.”

“They must have done something dreadful,” Sophia said.

Lichen did not answer. He swallowed another mouthful of his stew and then ate on until he had scraped the bottom of the bowl. “They fled to the Eerie Sea,” he said finally, breaking the silence. “And as far as I know, they make their home there still.”

The stone house had several rooms, and Lichen led Sophia to a small bedroom with a square window that overlooked the quarry. All was black beyond the glass. Lichen opened it, saying that the night was warm. A scent of piney soil drifted in through the open window. He gave her an extra pillow and a cotton blanket before saying good night, and Sophia wearily removed her boots and prepared herself for bed. Washing her face in a bowl set above the bureau, she wiped away the many miles they had covered that day.
So tomorrow we reach Oakring,
she thought.
And we will see the grove where the Lachrima disappear.
She felt a tremor of nervousness, wondering what the new day would bring. Shaking out the blanket, which smelled faintly of wood smoke, she climbed into the bed. As she rested her head on the pillow, the words of her Ausentinian map came to her with a flash:
“You will travel to the Forest of Truces, where the silent bell rings and the dormant seed grows. From then on, the map you follow must be your own.”