The Crimson Skew Read Online Free

the destructive knowledge offuture Ages. Now he was forced to flee from the very organization he had once served.
    On the first night of their long Atlantic journey, Wren had explained how he found himself in such a predicament. They were gathered in Calixta’s cabin—Burr idling with a deck of cards, Calixta cleaning her pistol, Errol mending his cape, and Goldenrod listening along with Sophia. Despite her unrelenting seasickness, Sophia was mesmerized.
    â€œAs you’ve read in your mother’s diary,” Wren began, indicating the pages that he had copied for Sophia, “I met Minna and Bronson in February of 1881. I left them safe and sound in Seville, and then I returned with the
Roost
to Australia. Soon after our arrival, my crew and I were arrested.” He gave a wry smile. “There were many charges, but they all pertained to how I had broken the law in assisting your parents. The watch I gave them was the greatest breach. I soon found myself serving a very long prison sentence. Ten years, to be exact. Most of my crew were let off, fortunately.”
    â€œHow did they know—how could they know—about any of it?” asked Sophia.
    Wren waved his hand dismissively. “The League has ways of knowing these things—many things. Sometimes it seems they know all things.”
    â€œAn informer?” Calixta’s pistol lay disassembled before her on a canvas cloth, and she looked up at Wren with a shrewd look as she polished the handle.
    â€œMy crew are beyond reproach,” he said. “No—it is nothing like what you can imagine. Let me put it briefly so you canunderstand what I am up against.” He enumerated the points on his fingers. “Each Age has its reigning wisdom. For the Papal States, which we leave behind, it is religion. It organizes and directs all forms of knowledge. In New Occident, where your uncle’s mapmaking is so prized, Sophia, it is science. Before the Disruption, the ruling wisdom in Australia, too, was science. But once we joined with future Ages, we were caught in their sway, and the future Ages are dominated by the Ars—the arts.”
    His listeners waited. The cards in Burr’s hands rasped and rustled as he shuffled them from one hand to another. When he spoke, his voice was perplexed. “As in . . . painting? And music?”
    â€œThose are certainly artistic forms.” Burr gestured around the cabin, filled with paintings of Hispaniola that Calixta had acquired and curated with care. A girl splitting coconuts hung by the door; a battle at sea dominated the wall above a rack of rolled maps; and a breaking storm at sunset hung across from it. Each brought a spot of lightness to the dark wood walls. “And they have more power than people generally recognize. Each of these canvases is transporting in a way that you may not immediately realize. It is why Calixta liked them in the first place, no doubt—each had an undeniable influence.”
    Calixta looked up from her work. “Of course they do.”
    Wren gave her a nod. “I’m glad you agree. But it is the impulse of the Ars—the intuitive, interpretive, imaginative faculties, the ‘Three Eyes,’ as they are called—that really lie at their foundation. They can be channeled into painting and music,theater and sculpture, as they are in your Ages, but they can also be channeled into reading and understanding and shaping the world itself. Human minds. Cities. Societies. Landscapes.”
    â€œI don’t understand,” Errol said flatly. The cape he was holding lay in his lap, his mending forgotten.
    â€œIt is almost unimaginable unless you have seen what the Ars can do, just as the world seen through a microscope is unimaginable unless you have seen what one can do.”
    â€œWhat is a microscope?” Errol asked.
    Wren smiled. “I am making this too complicated. Errol, how would you communicate the purpose