A Riddle in Ruby (13 page)

Things happened quickly after that.

Some Gentlemen, that I've showed this Piece of Art, count it not fair Play, but I'm not in the least of their Opinion.

—
Ezekiel Pelham,
Arts Martial and Practice

G
rundwidge Fen was the first to speak. “Miss,” he crooned, “this establishment is closed for business. Please return during normal business hours.”

“I merely require refreshment and direction, my good man,” Athen said, playing the haughty heiress. He was pitch perfect. The gestures, the tone, and the
feel
of “girl” were all there. The insufferable boy had a future on the stage if he ever could lower himself to it.

“My man and I have wandered astray, and I wish to return to— Is that a boy in a sack?” The lady and her serving man, who was most definitely Cram, never mind the mustache, advanced into the room to get a better look. Bulldog pushed Ruby's head further down with his massive hand.

Fen glanced around him at the upset worktable, the man with the bleeding eye, the young “boy” most of the way into a bag. “We do not have tea brewing at this time. This establishment is closed. The stairs to UpTown are ten blocks down, at the end of the alley.”

The lady persisted. “No tea? But certainly—”

“This is the king's business, girl.” Leftenant Potts threatened. “Turn around and walk away, or if you like, we will escort you and your man here bodily into the street.”

Athen purred, “Not a true gentleman, I see.” The lady turned to her servant. “I fear we must depart, Cramwich, lest these king's men do us violence.”

“Ah, weeel, moi laydee.” His butler's accent would have slain an actual duchess on contact. “Ahee surpose we muhst mahk our departivo.”

Athen stared at Cram. “Indeed. My parasol, if you please.”

Cram hesitated and tugged at a large, purple, inappropriate scarf tied around his neck. “Thy parasol, moi lahdee?”

“Yes, Cramwich. My parasol.”

Cram smiled weakly and slid a step to the side. “Howeverward, the clouds outward produce no rain. Indeed, the Lid covers the street. Perhaps thy need it not.”

Athen tapped his foot. In a delicate ladies' shoe.

Cram sighed, “Very well, mah lahdee. Eef thy insist.”

The bulldog sailor looked at the cow sailor. The cow shrugged.

The servant presented the little umbrella with a flourish. Like lightning, Athen tore his dueling sword from the concealment of the parasol. He wrapped his wrist three times in the long train of the dress and leveled the point at the eye of the leftenant.

“You will stand aside and give us that boy or we shall take him.” Athen's voice had dropped lower.

Potts barked laughter. “Miss, your governess needs to spend more time with you on sums. I count two of you and we number six.”

“Five.” Fen cleared his throat. “I urge you to take this matter into the street, away from the many delicate mechanisms that—”

“We are six,” Potts repeated, “and I will warn you that indeed, I am not a gentleman, and neither I nor my men have any hesitation toward applying violence to servants or to young ladies who have the gumption to draw steel on me and mine.”

Athen did not move. “Duly noted. You are a pig who beats women and has no interest in a fair fight.”

Potts laughed. “At least we are on familiar terms.” He drew his sword. “Mister Collins, Mister Pratt, boys.”

Cram grabbed the closest weapon, which happened to be a feather pen.

He put the pen back and instead grabbed a heavy metal butter churn.

The tall one in the back, Collins, had drawn his blade and edged toward the back door, next to a shelf stacked
with powders and oils, set to guard the exit. Pratt, round like a puffer fish and twice as creepy, stood fast next to the leftenant. He opened his mouth to start a jape of his own. It became a howl of pain as Athen lunged forward and pierced him through the leg.

Athen ripped his blade out of the middy's leg just in time to parry two cuts from Leftenant Potts, whose eyes widened in surprise. Athen whirled to the right, dress billowing, and enveloped Bulldog's long knife in the folds of the rest of the gown. With a twitch of his wrist, the knife clattered to the floor. So that was why he was always going on about his cloak.

Behind Ruby, Cram screamed like a banshee and leaped forward with the butter churn over his head, and Cow stood still in shock. Cram, misjudging his leap, bounced off the man's thick chest like it was taut sailcloth. He landed where he began, took stock of his situation, and screamed his battle cry again. Cow shrugged and circled his massive fists like a street fighter.

Grundwidge Fen scuttled up his ladder in the corner of the room, as if trying to put distance between him and
a rising flood. Midshipman Collins was rummaging in one of the shelves.

Pratt, stuttering with pain, grabbed at Ruby's foot, gripping the knife from the floor in his other hand. Ruby kicked at it with her sacked-up legs and scrambled back like a crippled inchworm.

Her head bumped hard on a wall. Pratt slashed out, and she barely twisted away. She bunched up her knees and kicked at his face. She missed, hitting his shoulder. He gathered himself for another stab. Nowhere to go.

Just then a delicate shoe came out of nowhere and slammed down hard on Pratt's knife hand.

Athen, pressed by two opponents, had backed across the floor and was now standing on the midshipman's wrist. The knife skittered across the planks. Leftenant Potts was bleeding from a number of cuts, and Bulldog was pierced in the shoulder.

The big sailor pulled a press gun out of his belt and slammed the heel of his hand down on the contact, firing a ball deep into Athen's waist. Now Athen yelled, something between a gasp and a scream, and tottered.
Bulldog dropped the spent firearm, picked up the discarded knife, and closed in.

Cram, openmouthed and with a strength Ruby did not believe from his skinny frame, hurled the metal churn across the room.

It completely missed Bulldog but slammed into the shoulder of Leftenant Potts, plowing him into the far wall of the workshop. Athen reversed the hilt of the dueling sword and slammed it into Bulldog's wrist, knocking the knife from his hand.

The big sailor lunged forward and wrapped Athen in a crushing bear hug, pulling him up into the air. Pratt was now free, and Ruby kicked at him again. This time she landed both feet straight in his face, and something crunched. He rolled away, moaning.

Athen, sword useless in the clutches of the sailor, reared his smooth, pale forehead back. Then he slammed it full into Bulldog's face. The sailor dropped Athen and staggered back. Athen dropped to one knee. There was a bloom of red dyeing the lace at the hip of the dress. Cram, making threatening motions with his hands, backed over
to them. Cow had not seemed inclined to violence in the first place and did not pursue.

Wounded, they stared at their opponents across the dismantled workshop.

When she read
Bastionado
, Ruby had always imagined swordplay as a thrilling dance, filled with grace and daring.

This was not a dance. It was a chicken coop on fire.

Cram helped her out of the sack. She thought she should say “thank you” or “my hero” or something similar to Athen, but all that came out was “pretty dress.”

Through gasps, Athen managed, “This old thing?”

Across the room, Leftenant Potts raised two clocklock pistols and yelled, “Show them your iron!” The sailors leveled long guns, and the midshipman on the floor cradled another press gun.

Potts grinned at Athen over the barrel of his pistol. “You dance prettily in that dress, girl. Can you twirl around a pistol ball?” He rolled his left shoulder, where a nasty cut was bleeding freely. Terror gripped Ruby. It was Potts's blood on Athen's sword, and now Athen was
going to die. Just like Gwath. Potts motioned with one of his pistols toward the blade. “Now put that pigsticker down, and call off your man there”—he nodded at Cram, who had recovered his churn—“and we can come to an understanding.”

Athen stepped in front of Ruby and Cram. “I think not, sir. I estimate that you will cut at least two of us down as soon as we lower our weapons.”

Ruby whispered, “What are you doing?”

Athen did not have time to answer, however, as Potts grinned. “I am dearly glad that this is your position.” He cocked his weapon. Ruby leaped forward, too late, to drag Athen down.

She saw the tall midshipman, Collins, forgotten in the corner, pull two bottles from a shelf, strike the necks together, and then point them at Potts.

FLEFFLEEFFLEFFLEFFLE.

Black stuff jetted out of the two bottles. Quicker than lightning, a wave of black foam filled the room, taller than a man and thicker, an impossible supply out of those two tiny flasks. It completely enveloped
Potts, Bulldog, Cow, Pratt, and the back door.

All was silent.

After a moment a muffled shot sounded, as from far away.

Nothing came out of the chemystral chunk.

Fen's head and shoulders stuck out between the top of the mass and the ceiling, and he was staring bug-eyed at Collins.

“Compelling chemystry, young sir!” he breathed.

The midshipman, Collins, turned to the shelf again, grabbed two heaping handfuls of red dust from a bin, and tossed them at the wall next to him. The dust clung there, shining as if it were wet, and then changed to a darker scarlet. A tiny glimmer flashed in the center of the circle, then grew. Ruby gasped. The flash was light from the street outside, and a great hole was appearing. No, the wall was crumbling, falling to the planks below like heavy Christmas snow.

Wild eyed and sheathed in sweat, the boy turned to them. “We cannot leave through the front. There are more out there. They will shoot us, and I can do no more
tinkercraft. The reeve, Wisdom Rool, is coming. I am a friend. Follow me.” He jumped through the now man-size opening in the wall.

They looked at one another. It was Cram who said, “Come on then,” and they limped through the hole into the street beyond.

In the quiet that remained, his head protruding from the great black blob that filled the room, Grundwidge Fen said, “Oh, dear. This will be troublesome for me.”

Quintessence is not endless. Many young chemystral scientists have Burned themselves Dry in their enthusiasm to accomplish Great Works. The wise student nurtures the candle before assaying the bonfire.

—Robert Boyle, FRS, ed.,
Principia Chymia,
1666

T
hey went to ground in the abandoned remains of a boathouse, tucked into the angle between the street and the Lid, where the city's great roof came out of the earth.

They had stumbled through the hole in the wall of the Smelted Grouse and scrambled into the brief shelter of a narrow alley. From there it had become clear that Ruby was still half drugged, Athen was gravely wounded, and the midshipman, Collins, was caught somewhere between
passing out and paralysis. So it had been Cram who led them sneaking away from the early-morning traffic into a building in a dark, quiet corner of UnderTown.

They were alive, for certain, but it was all torn sails and tangled knots. Her crafty trip to Fen's had failed. The daring rescue had almost killed them all. And now they had a companion she knew nothing about, except that he could make wood melt and was dressed in the uniform of the ones who had taken the only family she had known.

They hustled from the front room, a kind of office, into a warehouse, much larger and higher than the first. Half-completed barges and rowboats lined both walls, looming in the shadows. Light from a long-abandoned tinker's lamp cut down from a hook in the ceiling and illuminated an overturned hull on the factory floor.

Athen lay facedown on it atop a man's weight of Switz lace and ugly fabric. They tore the back of the dress open so he was bared to the waist. It was a bloody mess. On the right just above the hip there was a rough hole about the size of a thumb. Athen's pale back shuddered with breath.

The young naval officer rummaged in Athen's bag, muttering, with Cram looking over his shoulder.

“Give me that!” Ruby snarled, just as he said, “Luck. I think this is one.” She snatched the bag out of his grasp, leaving him holding a little bottle up to the light. The ampule was full of bright green, translucent liquid.

She put herself between him and Athen.

“What are you doing?” She wanted to intimidate him, but her voice came out more panicked than threatening.

“Helping your friend. I need to pour this mixture—it is a chemystral aid—into the wound.”

She balled her fist. “Back up, middy. Just because you pretended to help us does not mean that we trust you and will let you pour some devil potion into our friend.” She looked between the two. “Cram.”

The servant boy did not move.

“Cram!”

“He says there be metal still in the wound. The potion is some tinkercraft that will dissolve any little metal hangers and seal the hole up.”

“Then Athen needs a physicker to help him, not some
pimply mariner who was just pointing a gun at us.”

“I never actually—

“Ruby.” The whisper came from behind her. Athen was looking at her out of one eye in a stark white face. He mumbled something inaudible. She knelt next to him.

He took a shallow breath and looked her deep in the eye. “Don't be a mule,” he said. “Wound needs to close. My ampule. He could have betrayed us. Let him help.” There was something else in the way he was looking at her. Something big.

She stood. “What do I do?”

Collins moved forward and motioned to Cram. “The two of you need to hold her down. It all needs to go into the wound, and the body needs to be still to let it run its course. She will struggle.” He still thought Athen was a woman, and Ruby was disinclined to change that supposition. He rolled up his sleeve. “I understand the process is quite painful.”

Ruby said, “You understand? You haven't done this before?”

Cram interrupted. “Get up there, hold the arms, and
put your knees onto the shoulders, Ferret,” he ordered. Ruby clambered onto the flat, upturned hull and did as she was told.

Cram gripped Athen's legs and then lifted his eyes to Ruby's. Eyes full of fear.

Collins unstoppered the little bottle and held the liquid above the wound. It glittered in the half-light. “Ready?”

Cram muttered something about his mam and then nodded.

Collins turned to Ruby. “Ready?”

No. “Yes,” she said.

He flicked a little lever on the side of the bottle. Gray powder passed down into the green liquid from a tiny compartment, and the whole thing flashed deep blue. “All right,” he said, and held his hand hard down on the back next to the wound.

Collins poured the stuff in. Athen whimpered, then screamed into the fabric, and then began bucking like a sea serpent. His head struck Ruby full in the face, and she saw stars. She held on, though, and sucked some blood
from her split lip. Finally Athen came to rest, pulling air in ragged gasps.

The midshipman was looking at her across Athen's back, face ashen. His hair was mussed, and his shirt was torn at the neck. He nodded. “Now we need to do the other side.” Ruby cursed inside.

The first thing she saw as they turned Athen over was the bloody wound. It was smaller on this side and more precise.

The second thing Ruby saw was that Athen was not a boy. Athen was a girl, with an upper half to prove it.

Ruby's savior, sheathed in sweat, far too pale and gritting her teeth, whispered, “Athena Boyle, pleased to meet you.”

Then she fainted into the pile of crimson lace.

She looked like a princess while she slept. Mind you, not one of those flouncy, chittering creatures who faint and sigh and run screaming from the dragon. This was a warrior princess, who would stand and fight and slay the beast with a broken ax head, salvaged at the last moment
from the hoard. Ruby traced the air just above the line of her jaw. What had seemed delicate on Lord Athen was solid and muscular for a girl and set in resolve even as she slept.

They had put her back in the breeches and shirt of her gentleman's clothes, salvaged from Cram's bag, and covered her with her coat for warmth. The ruined dress lay at the foot of the boat like a pile of finishing rags, stained with red paint. After Athen—she corrected herself—after
Athena
had fainted, a strange silence had descended. They'd poured the remaining putty in the wound, and the patient had remained mercifully unconscious.

As soon as it was done, the tall midshipman had made his way to the other room like an arrow from a bow, muttering something about propriety, and leaving Ruby and Cram to dress their patient. It had been awkward.

Cram had artfully arranged the wide belt, tricorne, and dueling sword on a nearby workbench. He was over in the corner of the warehouse workshop, alternately banging, grinding, or sawing something. He had left his
post by the upturned boat with a frown as soon as Ruby had pulled a chair across the wood-strewn floor and crunched down next to Athena.

She had never seen Athena Boyle's hands. They were more delicate than those of most boys Ruby had met, but they had seen work, even through the gloves that now lay beside the coat like a pair of masquerade masks. There was a thick callus in the valley between the thumb and forefinger—from years of fencing, Ruby guessed—and there was a ropy strength to the wrist that Ruby most certainly did not have.

Athena was heroic.

And she was a liar.

Just then Athena opened her eyes. She seemed mildly surprised to see Ruby and quirked the same infuriating smirk that had cut Ruby so deeply that first moment in the carriage.

Ruby rapped her on the nose with a tight roll of paper.

“Ow.”

“That did not hurt.”

“It did. It most certainly did.”

“Well deserved then.”

“I had thought you would have slunk back into the gutters by now?”

Ruby ignored the question and unrolled the paper, holding it above Athena's eyes. It was the baker's letter, the one her father had nicked for her back on the
Thrift
.

“What does it mean?” She cut off the girl before she could speak. “Speak truth to me, Athena Boyle. You are a liar and a cheat, and so am I, but we are in this storm together and sinking fast. No half-truths and no unspoken words, neither.”

“You are welcome.”

Ruby ground her teeth. “Thank you for saving my life. You are a hero. When I am queen of Andalusia, I will throw you a parade. What is this letter?”

Athena tracked a speck of sawdust as it floated through the half-light. “It is mine. May I have it back, please?”

“Did you not hear me?” She continued to watch the speck, so Ruby tried a different line. “This letter has power. You used it to strong-arm my father, and he may
be many things, but he is not easily bullied. What is it?”

“And in association, who am I? Is that not the true question?”

“The letter calls you a baker and a grocer. You are neither.”

“Do you know the dry weight of a pound of flax? I do. In fact—”

“What is this letter? Tell me!”

Cram, across the room, chose that moment to begin hammering the dents out of his butter churn.

“He likes you, you know.” Athena braced an elbow on the bottom of the boat and slowly levered herself up to sitting.

Ruby helped, steadying her back. “Careful.”

“The wound is packed and clean, and the putty will hold everything steady, until the flesh replaces it.” She probed gingerly under the coat. “The middy did his job well. It pains me, but it is only pain. I am fit as a fox fur, as they say.”

“Fiddle.”

“What?”

“Fit as a
fiddle
. Did you grow up in a castle or something?”

“Technically Boyle Hall is a holdfast. He does like you, you know.”

“Cram? I almost got you killed. He's just waiting for his chance to lay me out with that churn.”

“Whatever you may think, the three of us are bound. And in enemy territory. Cram over there and this wounded counterfeit fop are your allies. Your crew.”

“Fine then. Crewmates don't keep secrets. What is the letter? And who are you, Athena Boyle?”

Athena pushed her coat away and made to get up but then winced and thought better of it. “Pray hand me my waistcoat? I feel naked without it.” The vest was embroidered in a pattern of peacocks, and Ruby helped guide Athena's arms through the holes.

“You are correct, of course. I fear you may not like or believe what you hear.” Athena began to button the intricate buttons. “I will have you know that I am breaking an oath to do this. I do not take oaths lightly, but I see that you will know or you will be gone again. My
family, the Boyles, belongs to an ancient organization.”

“Not another ancient organization,” Ruby moaned. “I have read
Bastionado
, and I like a good yarn as much as the next girl, but if you think for one moment—”

“It is an organization, and it is ancient, and I am telling you what you wish to know. Or, I am attempting to.” Athena did not look up from her buttoning. “Shall I continue?”

Ruby waved. “Well. Speak.”

“An ancient organization, then, and one that has weighed and measured the actions of princes of the church, kings, even nations. It has pitted itself against the great and the cruel, all in the name of keeping the world balanced.”

“What is this famous company called?”

“The Worshipful Order of Grocers.”

Cram was sawing at something across the room.

“Excuse me?”

“The Worshipful Order of Grocers. You are laughing.”

“I am.” Ruby could not help herself. “Not the most
impressive name for a secret society.”

Athena sighed. “That is the point. We do not stand out. We blend in. Our task is to keep the great powers in balance. The order began as a merchants' collective. Governing the spice trade, fairness, and the like. Our symbol is a pepper mill. Well, our second symbol.”

“What is the first?”

“A camel.”

“A camel on a pepper mill? Terrifying. Not to mention difficult.”

“Ruby, please.”

“Does the camel have a hat? With a feather on it?”

“Do you want to hear this?”

“Sorry.”

Athena pulled an arm into her greatcoat. “That letter is a badge, if you will. The bearer can use it to obtain help from other members of the order in dire circumstances.”

“That is not what it says. It says you have recipes.”

“Should it say, ‘The bearer of this letter is on a secret mission, possibly against the crown; please provide illegal aid'? It is code.”

“But you used it on my father.”

Athena shivered and pulled the greatcoat up to her neck like a blanket.

“Is he a member of this bakers' circle?” Ruby asked.

“Grocers. The term includes practitioners of the baking arts, as well as distillers of strong spirits.”

“You did not answer my question.”

“No, I did not.” Athena agreed. “But I have answered your first question and broken three of the prime ingredients of the master recipe in the process.” Her eyelids flickered. “I would prefer you did not mention this to the people we are going to see.”