shadows.
He returned his attention to the maps, in which he observed a troubling inconsistency. At the top of some pages the rigorous street grid decayed into a dense incoherent scrawl of slums. In others the regular streets continued north to the map’s edge, losing detail, losing place names, but still running rail-straight. Several of the maps ended in arrows pointing north, captioned to the mountain. Onewas cleverly designed so that the street lines departed from their courses at the map’s edge and converged to form foothills, slopes, a witch’s-hat peak. Another simply stopped dead at an irregular border marked LIMITS OF HOLCROFT MUNICIPAL TRUST CATCHMENT & AUTHORITY; north ofthat was white space, filled with locally interesting demographic and commercial statistics.
One map—hand-scrawled, with shaking lines, as if it showed some secret and forbidden knowledge—marked the lines of trains, stitched back and forth over the city, tagged with the products they carried: coal? and meat? and roses? and gold. The map appeared homemade; whose work was it? Hypothetical stations were marked with question marks. The lines arced, switched back, converged toward the north, became vague guesses, abstractions, mere arrows pointing north,
up
, to the Mountain.
But no map Arjun could find reached more than a few miles north of Carnyx Street. He knew without looking that there would be no maps of the Mountain itself. There never were, anywhere.
In all the shelves of maps, and books, and music, Arjun saw nothing that wasn’t yellow with age. Was that deliberate? Perhaps Ruth chose to surround herself with old things; she seemed sentimental. Marta was the practical one. That was not quite true, he thought, but true enough that he felt a certain satisfaction in the cleanness and efficiency of the distinction. He was learning to understand the world again!
But perhaps all those things were old because there was simply nothing new being made in the city. The Beast had said these were the last days, and in the glimpse Arjun had had of the city it had struck him as an uncultured place … A
tired place.
His mood soured again.
Shortly before Arjun fell asleep, head on the table, it occurred to him that he could
read.
Many people in many districts couldn’t. That was a thing worth knowing, too.
T he candle burned down. In the mornine Ruth winced and bit her lip at the waste of it but said nothing.
It rained all day, alternating between a thin cold spittle and savage sheets of water that forced their way into the shop and leaked from the cracks and spread dark stains across the ceiling plaster.Arjun helped move the furniture and cover the books and empty the most exposed shelving. It was difficult work, one-handed; he dropped things; he was afraid he was getting underfoot. Ruth and Marta moved deftly around him as if he wasn’t there.
Ghost
, they’d called him. He stopped Ruth and asked her, “How can I pay you? Why are you helping me?”
She shrugged. “I told you; we get a lot of ghosts down from the Mountain. None of you last long. It’s all right.”
Marta said, “Mrs. Rawley, who runs the Tearoom, had a man last month. She called him Woodhead after the beer, because he said he remembered drinking it wherever he came from, and didn’t remember much else. He kept talking about the War that’s coming. It scared her. She sent him over to us because she knows we don’t mind.”
“Can I speak to him?”
“Vanished somewhere between here and there. Between No. 96 and No. 27. Ruth sat up waiting for him but he never came. He was a strong one, too, Mrs. Rawley says, a soldier, could have been useful.”
“So it’s all right,” Ruth said. “I like having you around. Even if you can never tell me what you saw.”
“Bandages off, in a day or two,” Marta said. “Then we’ll talk about
payment.”
I n the afternoon the Know-Nothings came. The rumor was passed all down Carnyx Street. Ruth observed that Mr. Zeigler
He returned his attention to the maps, in which he observed a troubling inconsistency. At the top of some pages the rigorous street grid decayed into a dense incoherent scrawl of slums. In others the regular streets continued north to the map’s edge, losing detail, losing place names, but still running rail-straight. Several of the maps ended in arrows pointing north, captioned to the mountain. Onewas cleverly designed so that the street lines departed from their courses at the map’s edge and converged to form foothills, slopes, a witch’s-hat peak. Another simply stopped dead at an irregular border marked LIMITS OF HOLCROFT MUNICIPAL TRUST CATCHMENT & AUTHORITY; north ofthat was white space, filled with locally interesting demographic and commercial statistics.
One map—hand-scrawled, with shaking lines, as if it showed some secret and forbidden knowledge—marked the lines of trains, stitched back and forth over the city, tagged with the products they carried: coal? and meat? and roses? and gold. The map appeared homemade; whose work was it? Hypothetical stations were marked with question marks. The lines arced, switched back, converged toward the north, became vague guesses, abstractions, mere arrows pointing north,
up
, to the Mountain.
But no map Arjun could find reached more than a few miles north of Carnyx Street. He knew without looking that there would be no maps of the Mountain itself. There never were, anywhere.
In all the shelves of maps, and books, and music, Arjun saw nothing that wasn’t yellow with age. Was that deliberate? Perhaps Ruth chose to surround herself with old things; she seemed sentimental. Marta was the practical one. That was not quite true, he thought, but true enough that he felt a certain satisfaction in the cleanness and efficiency of the distinction. He was learning to understand the world again!
But perhaps all those things were old because there was simply nothing new being made in the city. The Beast had said these were the last days, and in the glimpse Arjun had had of the city it had struck him as an uncultured place … A
tired place.
His mood soured again.
Shortly before Arjun fell asleep, head on the table, it occurred to him that he could
read.
Many people in many districts couldn’t. That was a thing worth knowing, too.
T he candle burned down. In the mornine Ruth winced and bit her lip at the waste of it but said nothing.
It rained all day, alternating between a thin cold spittle and savage sheets of water that forced their way into the shop and leaked from the cracks and spread dark stains across the ceiling plaster.Arjun helped move the furniture and cover the books and empty the most exposed shelving. It was difficult work, one-handed; he dropped things; he was afraid he was getting underfoot. Ruth and Marta moved deftly around him as if he wasn’t there.
Ghost
, they’d called him. He stopped Ruth and asked her, “How can I pay you? Why are you helping me?”
She shrugged. “I told you; we get a lot of ghosts down from the Mountain. None of you last long. It’s all right.”
Marta said, “Mrs. Rawley, who runs the Tearoom, had a man last month. She called him Woodhead after the beer, because he said he remembered drinking it wherever he came from, and didn’t remember much else. He kept talking about the War that’s coming. It scared her. She sent him over to us because she knows we don’t mind.”
“Can I speak to him?”
“Vanished somewhere between here and there. Between No. 96 and No. 27. Ruth sat up waiting for him but he never came. He was a strong one, too, Mrs. Rawley says, a soldier, could have been useful.”
“So it’s all right,” Ruth said. “I like having you around. Even if you can never tell me what you saw.”
“Bandages off, in a day or two,” Marta said. “Then we’ll talk about
payment.”
I n the afternoon the Know-Nothings came. The rumor was passed all down Carnyx Street. Ruth observed that Mr. Zeigler
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