The Crimson Skew Read Online Free Page A

of the True Cross to someone who had never heard of it? Sophia, how would you explain the workings of modern medicine? The Ars are like this: a system of meaning and thought with so many centuries behind it that you must be fully immersed to understand it. And being fully immersed, you have trouble explaining the assumptions—they seem obvious to you. You understand them without knowing how.”
    â€œIs this the secret that the League is keeping?” Sophia asked. “The Ars?” She did not entirely understand Wren’s explanation, either, but she understood his saying that the Ars might be incomprehensible from a distance. Memory maps were like that—impossible to imagine until one had immersed oneself in the memories. Perhaps the Ars were similar: an entire world springing into being, a world that could not be described, only experienced.
    â€œNo, no.” Wren shook his head. “That—that I will tell youanother time. I merely mention the Ars so you understand how I was accused and sentenced so easily. While I was out on the ocean they knew nothing, but once I returned and was in their hands . . . everything was revealed to them. I did not even know that your parents had called me with the watch, Sophia, because I was serving my sentence already. By the time I found out—when I was released, only a few months ago—it was far too late. Still, I felt keenly my promise to help them and my failure in keeping it. I communicated with Cassia—Remorse—in New Occident, and we made a plan. Your extraction was not originally what we intended, Goldenrod, but when we learned of your circumstances, Cassia improvised.”
    â€œBut if they punished you before for helping my parents,” Sophia said, “surely they would not let you help me now.”
    Wren looked down at his hands. “You are quite right. I can never return to Australia. I left knowing I would be a fugitive for the rest of my days.”
    Sophia looked at him wide-eyed, shocked at how much this near-stranger had lost for the sake of her and her parents. She thought of the pins that had dotted Shadrack’s map in the underground map room—the pins tracking possible sightings of Minna and Bronson after their disappearance.
To think,
she realized,
that each of those pins could be someone like Richard Wren. Someone not just catching a glimpse of Minna and Bronson, but helping them—at great cost.
    â€œAnd will the League give pursuit?” asked Calixta.
    â€œPerhaps. But I suspect they have more important matters to attend to. I am a very small fish in their ocean. Most likelythey will cast a rather loose net, hoping it will catch me some time. I have done everything possible to ensure they will not.”
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    I T SEEMED NOW that Wren had been very wrong. Or perhaps, Sophia reasoned, two thousand pieces of silver were a loose net for the League: they advertised a reward and waited for the pirates and smugglers and merchants of the Indies to do their work for them. But it did not seem that they had decided to forget about Richard Wren—not yet.
    On the four-day journey to New Orleans, Wren set out to change his appearance. Since the flyer had showed him long-haired and bearded, he shaved his face and head. After that, Calixta painted his face, arms, and hands with a lasting ink, drawing the elaborate swirls and patterned lines typical of the Indies tattoos.
    The
Swan
approached the harbor at midday, and its passengers had their first glimpse of the weather that had plagued New Occident for weeks. A bank of yellowish clouds lay piled like cotton batting to the edges of the horizon. “I have never seen clouds of that kind,” Goldenrod murmured.
    â€œWhat makes them yellow?” asked Sophia.
    Goldenrod shook her head. “I do not know. Perhaps dust?” She frowned. “They seem so still.” The clouds hung low and heavy over the docks; even