The Glass Sentence (The Mapmakers Trilogy) Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Maps

  PROLOGUE

  PART I EXPLORATION

  Chapter 1: Closing an Age

  Chapter 2: The Wharf Trolley

  Chapter 3: Shadrack Elli, Cartologer

  Chapter 4: Through the Library Door

  Chapter 5: Learning to Read

  Chapter 6: A Trail of Feathers

  Chapter 7: Between Pages

  Chapter 8: The Exile

  Chapter 9: Departure

  PART II PURSUIT

  Chapter 10: The White Chapel

  Chapter 11: On the Tracks

  Chapter 12: Travel by Moonlight

  Chapter 13: The Western Line

  Chapter 14: The Glacine Age

  Chapter 15: Safe Harbor

  Chapter 16: Seasick

  Chapter 17: A Swan in the Gulf

  Chapter 18: Chocolate, Paper, Coin

  Chapter 19: The Bullet

  Chapter 20: At the Gates

  PART III ENTRAPMENT

  Chapter 21: The Botanist

  Chapter 22: The Soil of the Ages

  Chapter 23: The Four Maps

  Chapter 24: Into the Sand

  Chapter 25: The Royal Library

  Chapter 26: Of Both Marks

  Chapter 27: With an Iron Fist

  Chapter 28: Sailing South

  Chapter 29: The Leafless Tree

  Chapter 30: The Eclipse

  PART IV DISCOVERY

  Chapter 31: The Lined Palm

  Chapter 32: Flash Flood

  Chapter 33: The Nighting Vine

  Chapter 34: A Lost Age

  Chapter 35: Below the Lake

  Chater 36: A Map of the World

  Chapter 37: The End of Days

  Chapter 38: A Fair Wind, a Fair Hand

  Chapter 39: The Empty City

  EPILOGUE: To Each Her Own Age

  Acknowledgments

  About the author

  VIKING

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  First published in the United States of America by Viking,

  an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2014

  Copyright © 2014 by S. E. Grove

  Maps by Dave A. Stevenson

  Cover art copyright © 2014 by Stephanie Hans

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Grove, S. E.

  The glass sentence / S. E. Grove.

  pages cm. — (Mapmakers ; book 1)

  Summary: In 1891, in a world transformed by 1799’s Great Disruption—when all of the continents were flung into different time periods—thirteen-year-old Sophia Tims and her friend Theo go in search of Sophia’s uncle, Shadrack Elli, Boston’s foremost cartologer, who has been kidnapped.

  ISBN 978-0-698-14499-6

  [1. Fantasy. 2. Maps—Fiction. 3. Kidnapping—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.G9273Gl 2014

  [Fic] —dc23

  2013025832

  Version_1

  For my parents and my brother

  There can be no scholar without the heroic mind. The preamble of thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious to the conscious, is action. Only so much do I know, as I have lived. Instantly we know whose words are loaded with life, and whose not.

  The world,—this shadow of the soul, or other me—lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted with myself. I run eagerly into this resounding tumult.

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar,” 1837

  PROLOGUE

  IT HAPPENED LONG ago, when I was only a child. Back then, the outskirts of Boston were still farmland, and in the summer I spent the long days out of doors with friends, coming home only when the sun set. We escaped the heat by swimming in Boon’s Stream, which had a quick current and a deep pool.

  On one especially warm day in the summer of 1799, July 16, all my friends had arrived at the stream before me. I could hear them shouting as I ran toward the bank, and when they saw me standing at the edge of the best diving spot, they called to urge me on. “Jump, Lizzie, jump!” I stripped down to my linen underclothes. Then I took a running start and jumped. I had no way of knowing that when I landed, it would be in a different world.

  I found myself suspended over the pool. With my knees curled up and my arms wrapped around them, I hung there, looking at the water and at the bank near it, unable to move. It was like trying to wake while inside a dream. You want to wake, want to move, but you can’t; your eyes remain closed, your limbs remain stubbornly still. Only your mind is moving, saying, “Get up, get up!” It was just like that, except the dream that would not let go was the world around me.

  Everything had gone quiet. I could not even hear my heart beating. Yet I knew that time was passing, and it was passing too quickly. My friends remained motionless while the water around them rushed past in swirling currents at a frightening speed. And then I saw something happening on the banks of the stream.

  The grass began growing before my eyes. It grew steadily, until it reached the height that it normally reached in late summer. Then it began to wilt and brown. The leaves on the trees by the banks of the stream turned yellow and orange and red; before long, they had faded and fluttered to the ground. The light around me shone dully gray, as if stuck between day and night. As the leaves began to fall, the light grew dimmer. The field turned a silvery brown as far as I could see and in the next moment transformed itself into a wide, snow-covered expanse. The stream below me slowed and then froze. The snow rose and fell in waves, as it would through the passage of a long winter, and then it began to recede, pulling away from the naked branches and the soil, leaving muddy earth behind it. The ice on the stream broke into pieces and the water once again rushed through it. Beyond the banks of the stream, the ground turned a pale green, as new shoots sprang up through the soil, and the trees appeared to grow a verdant lace at their edges. Before too long, the leaves took on their darker summer hue and the grass grew higher. It passed in an instant, but I felt as though I had lived an entire year apart from the world while the world moved on.

  Suddenly, I dropped. I landed in Boon’s Stream and heard, once again, all the sounds of the world around me. The stream gurgled and splashed, and my friends and I looked at one another in shock. We had all seen the same thing, and we had no idea what had happened.

  In the days and weeks and months that followed, the people of Boston began to discover the incredible consequences of that moment, even if we could not begin to understand it. The ships from England and France ceased to arrive. When the first sailors who set out from Boston after the change returned, dazed and terrified, they brought back confounding stories of ancient ports and plagues. Traders who headed north described a barren land covered with snow, where all signs of human existence had vanished and incredible beasts known only in myth had suddenly appeared. Travelers who ve
ntured south gave reports so varied—cities of towering glass, and horse raids, and unknown creatures—that no two were the same.

  It became apparent that in one terrible moment the various parts of the world had come apart. They were unfastened from time. Spinning freely in different directions, each piece of the world had been flung into a different Age. When the moment passed, the pieces lay scattered, as close to each other in space as they had always been, but hopelessly separated by time. No one knew how old the world truly was, or which Age had caused the catastrophe. The world as we knew it had been broken, and a new world had taken its place.

  We called it the Great Disruption.

  —Elizabeth Elli to her grandson Shadrack, 1860

  1

  Closing an Age

  1891, June 14: 7-Hour 51

  New Occident began its experiment with elected representation full of hope and optimism. But it was soon tainted by corruption and violence, and it became clear that the system had failed. In 1823, a wealthy representative from Boston suggested a radical plan. He proposed that a single parliament govern New Occident and that any person who wished to voice an opinion before it should pay admittance. The plan was hailed—by those who could afford it—as the most democratizing initiative since the Revolution. They had laid the groundwork for the contemporary practice of selling parliament-time by the second.

  —From Shadrack Elli’s History of New Occident

  THE DAY NEW OCCIDENT closed its borders, the hottest day of the year, was also the day Sophia Tims changed her life forever by losing track of time.

  She had begun the day by keeping a close eye on the hour. In the Boston State House, the grand golden clock with its twenty hours hung ponderously over the speaker’s dais. By the time the clock struck eight, the State House was full to capacity. Arranged in a horseshoe around the dais sat the members of parliament: the eighty-eight men and two women rich enough to procure their positions. Facing them sat the visitors who had paid for time to address parliament, and farther back were the members of the public who could afford ground-floor seating. In the cheap seats on the upper balcony, Sophia was surrounded by men and women who had crammed themselves onto the benches. The sun poured in through the tall State House windows, shining off the gilt of the curved balcony rails.

  “Brutal, isn’t it?” the woman beside Sophia sighed, fanning herself with her periwinkle bonnet. There were beads of sweat on her upper lip, and her poplin dress was wilted and damp. “I would bet it is five degrees cooler on the ground floor.”

  Sophia smiled at her nervously, shuffling her boots against the wooden floorboards. “My uncle is down there. He’s going to speak.”

  “Is he now? Where?” The woman put her pudgy hand on the rail and peered down.

  Sophia pointed out the brown-haired man who sat, straight-backed, his arms folded across his chest. He wore a linen suit and balanced a slim leather book on his knee. His dark eyes calmly assessed the crowded hall. His friend Miles Countryman, the wealthy explorer, sat next to him, red from the heat, his shock of white hair limp with sweat. Miles wiped a handkerchief brusquely across his face. “He’s right there—in the front row of speakers.”

  “Where?” the woman asked, squinting. “Ah, look—the famous Shadrack Elli is here, I see.”

  Sophia smiled proudly. “That’s him. Shadrack is my uncle.”

  The woman looked at her in surprise, forgetting for a moment to fan herself. “Imagine that! The niece of the great cartologer.” She was clearly impressed. “Tell me your name, dear.”

  “Sophia.”

  “Then tell me, Sophia, how it is that your famous uncle can’t afford a better seat for you. Did he spend all his money on his time?”

  “Oh, Shadrack can’t afford time in parliament,” Sophia said matter-of-factly. “Miles paid for it—four minutes and thirteen seconds.”

  As Sophia spoke, the proceedings began. The two timekeepers on either side of the dais, stopwatches in their white-gloved hands, called for the first speaker, a Mr. Rupert Middles. A heavyset man with an elaborate mustache made his way forward. He straightened his mustard-colored cravat, smoothed his mustache with fat fingers, and cleared his throat. Sophia’s eyes widened as the timekeeper on the left set the clock to twenty-seven minutes. “Look at that!” the plump woman whispered. “It must have cost him a fortune!”

  Sophia nodded. Her stomach tensed as Rupert Middles opened his mouth and his twenty-seven minutes commenced. “I am honored to appear before parliament today,” he began thunderously, “this fourteenth of June of the year eighteen ninety-one, to propose a plan for the betterment of our beloved New Occident.” He took a deep breath. “The pirates in the United Indies, the hordes of raiders from the Baldlands, the gradual encroachment of our territories from north, west, and south—how long will New Occident go on ignoring the realities of our altered world, while the edges of our territory are eaten away by the greedy mouths of foreigners?” There were boos and cheers from the crowd, but Middles hardly paused. “In the last year alone, fourteen towns in New Akan were overrun by raiders from the Baldlands, paying for none of the privileges that come with living in New Occident but enjoying them all to the full. During the same period, pirates seized thirty-six commercial ships with cargo from the United Indies. I need not remind you that only last week, the Gusty Nor’easter, a proud Boston vessel carrying thousands of dollars in payment and merchandise, was seized by the notorious Bluebird, a despicable pirate who,” he added, his face red with exertion, “docks not a mile away in Boston harbor!” Growls of angry encouragement surged from the crowd. Middles took a rapid breath and went on. “I am a tolerant man, like the people of Boston.” There were faint cheers. “And I am an industrious man, like the people of Boston.” The cheers grew louder. “And I am loath to see my tolerance and my industry made a mockery by the greed and cunning of outsiders!” Clapping and cheering erupted from the crowd.

  “I am here to propose a detailed plan, which I call the ‘Patriot Plan,’ and which I am certain will be approved, as it represents the interests of all those who, like me, believe in upholding our tolerance and our industry.” He braced himself against the dais. “Effective immediately, the borders must be closed.” He paused for the piercing cheers. “Citizens of New Occident may travel freely—if they have the proper documentation—to other Ages. Foreigners living in New Occident who do not have citizenship will have several weeks to return to their Ages of origin, and those remaining will be forcibly deported on July fourth of this year, the day on which we celebrate the founding of this great nation.” More enthusiastic cries erupted, and a flurry of audience members stood to clap enthusiastically, continuing even as Middles charged ahead.

  Sophia felt her stomach sinking as Rupert Middles detailed the penalties for foreigners who remained in New Occident without documents and the citizens who attempted to travel out of the country without permission. He spoke so quickly that she could see a line of foam gathering at the edge of his mustache and his forehead shining with sweat. Gesticulating wildly, without bothering to wipe his brow, he spat across the dais as he enumerated the points of his plan and the crowd around him cheered.

  Sophia had heard it all before, of course. Living as she did with the most famous cartologer in Boston, she had met all the great explorers who passed through his study and heard the much-detested arguments championed by those who sought to bring the Age of Exploration to an end. But this did not make the vitriol of Rupert Middles any less appalling or his scheme any less terrible. As Sophia listened to the remaining minutes of the speech, she thought with growing anxiety of what the closing of the borders would mean: New Occident would lose its ties to the other Ages, beloved friends and neighbors would be forced to leave, but she, Sophia, would feel the loss even more acutely. They won’t have the right documents. They won’t get in and I will lose them forever, she thought, her heart pounding.

  The woman sitting beside Sophia fanned herself and shook her head in disapproval. Whe
n the twenty-seven minutes finally ran out and the timekeeper rang a loud bell, Middles staggered to his seat—sweating and panting—to wild applause that filled Sophia with dread. She could not imagine how Shadrack stood a chance of swaying his audience with only four minutes.

  “Dreadful spitter,” Sophia’s companion put in with distaste.

  “Mr. Augustus Wharton,” the first timekeeper called loudly, while his colleague turned the clock to fifteen minutes. The cheering and clapping subsided as a tall, white-haired man with a hooked nose strode confidently forward. He had no notes. He clasped the edges of the dais with long white fingers. “You may begin,” the timekeeper said.

  “I appear before this assembly,” Mr. Wharton began, in a deceptively low tone, “to commend the proposal put forth by Mr. Rupert Middles and persuade the ninety members of this parliament that we should not only put it in place, but we should carry it further,” he shouted, his voice rising to a crescendo. The audience on the parliament floor clapped ecstatically. Sophia watched, agonized, as Shadrack’s expression grew hard and furious.

  “Yes, we must close our borders, and yes, we must enact a swift deportation of foreigners who leech this great nation of its strength without giving it anything in return, but we must also close our borders to prevent the citizens of New Occident from leaving it and undermining our very foundations. I ask you: why should anyone wish to travel to other Ages, which we know to be inferior? Does not the true patriot stay home, where he belongs? I have no doubt that our great explorers, of whom we are so proud, have only the best intentions in traveling to distant lands, pursuing that esoteric knowledge which is unfortunately too lofty for many of us to comprehend.” He spoke with condescension as he inclined his head toward Shadrack and Miles.

  To Sophia’s horror, Miles jumped to his feet. The crowd jeered as Shadrack rose quickly, placing a hand on his friend’s arm and easing him back into his seat. Miles sat, fuming, while Wharton went on without acknowledging the interruption. “But surely these explorers are on occasion naive,” he continued, to loud calls of agreement, “or perhaps we should say idealistic, when they do not realize that the very knowledge they so prize becomes the twisted tool of foreign powers bent on this great nation’s destruction!” This was met with roars of approval. “Need I remind you of the great explorer Winston Hedges, whose knowledge of the Gulf Coast was ruthlessly exploited by pirates in the siege of New Orleans.” Loud boos indicated that the memory was, indeed, still fresh. “And it may not be lost on anyone,” he sneered, “that the masterful creations of a certain cartologer gracing us with his presence today make perfect research materials for any pirate, raider, or tyrannical ruler with an eye toward invasion.”