A Riddle in Ruby (18 page)

A pistol of Clocklock Artfulness (fig. 2). This requires your Cooperation of imprimis, a talented smith, and secundus, an artificer (Tinker) of no mean skill. The resulting weapon will fire three balls within the Count of Four, and is Exceeding Deadly. When these factors are considered, the high price of such a Piece will not seem Extravagant.

—Catalog, Ruben's Fine Arms and Armaments, UpTown

G
wath Maxim Number Nineteen: “Underestimate Them, and You Overestimate Yourself.” She could hear him in her head as if he were next to her as she stared at the door out of the girls' dormitory. The handle was the same outstretched hand, but there was no keyhole on this side. She could pick a lock of hair if she had to, but no keyhole meant no picking, and no picking meant explaining to Greta Van Huffridge that tying her down
to her bed and gagging her was simply a little-known gesture of sailor's friendship.

The door to the boys' dormitory did have a keyhole.

She slipped the lock and eased the door open into another half-lit hallway, this time of polished wood. After inching the door closed behind her, she reset the lock. She wanted no trail markers behind her. She doubted Hearth would show any lenience if she caught her attempting to escape. If Ax and Flame found her, it would be worse.

It was a longer hallway than the girls', and a door loomed at the end. There were nameplates here, too, but she ignored them as she passed. The smooth grain under her feet felt familiar. For a moment she was back in her father's cabin, buffing the finish until she could see the shadow of her face in it. But these people did not care about her, not a one of them. Madame Hearth had said as much. Even Athena had shown her true colors. Ruby was only a stupid piece in some kind of stupid game, and they had no hesitation about sacrificing her father now that they had her.

A shape materialized out of the dark in front of the
last door on the right. She stopped short.

It was an animal of some sort, curled up asleep, perhaps guarding its master's door. It moaned and whined in its slumber. It didn't have the terrifying metallic whine of the gearbeasts, but still, if it woke up and started yowling or barking, she was done and dusted!

She wished that they had left her a late supper; the beast might have taken a gift of food and let her pass. She readied her shoes in one hand and a sharp metal lockpick in the other. Providence, it was
big
. It had to weigh a hundred pounds at least. The pick seemed tiny in her hand, a sad replacement for her knives. She clung to the far wall as she moved past. The thing stirred in its sleep. She froze. It yawned, blinked its eyes, and muttered, “Mam?”

She should have known.

Cram rubbed the sleep from his eyes, which went wide in the dim light of the corridor.

Ruby put her finger to her lips to ask him,
Please, keep quiet.

She feared it was too late, that he'd call the alarm and
wake Athena, and they would give her a cell instead of a bedroom.

Cram did not call the alarm. Instead, he waved his hand theatrically around him, up and down the hall and pointed at her:
Why are you in the boys' hallway?

She pointed past him at the door he was guarding, which could only be Athena's:
Why is
she
here?

That caught Cram by surprise, and he turned his head, looking back at the door. He turned back and shrugged:
Doesn't matter.
He repeated:
What are
you
doing here?

Ruby mulled trying to lie to Cram in the middle of a hall full of potentially hostile student chemysts. So she told the truth. She pointed to herself and then made the two-fingers running sign down the hall and out:
I'm escaping.

This set Cram off. He launched into a jerky dance of silent, energetic gesture. Ruby thought she might have caught a few bits of it. Hugging for “safe.” Holding his palm to the door and himself and out to her, maybe “together” or “crew.” Then he mimed kicking something,
perhaps a door? And swimming. And then a long series that might have had something to do with his mother or a donkey. The overall feeling was:
Don't.

She shrugged:
I must.

He went still. Ruby cursed inside. He was going to sound the alarm. She couldn't blame him. He was Athena's man through and through. She caught herself thinking: If he opens his mouth, I may have to stick this pick in his throat. Can I do that? To Cram? But he did not yell, or bang on the door, or run down the hallway drumming on his butter churn. Instead, he motioned her to come closer. Something in the bend of his hand made her trust him. She moved forward, and he whispered into her ear, “The Friendly Dollop.”

She put her mouth to his ear and whispered back, “What?”

“It be a spice shop in UpTown. Henry Collins tasked me to give you the name, before he, um, left us.”

Time was burning.

She made to stand. He stood with her. “Ferret.”

“I have to go,” she said.

“A word or a note to Lady Boyle?”

Ruby shook her head. “She closed that door.”

“No, I can open it just fine. See here.”

“Cram, don't touch that. That's not—”

“Ah, I see what you meant there.”

The big door at the end of the hall was right next to Athena's. It was not even locked. Apparently the boys were more trusted than the girls.

Ruby looked over her shoulder, and Cram was standing there, watching her, his hand on his butter churn like some kind of guard in a castle somewhere. He waved.

She returned the wave, opened the door, and stepped through it.

The hallways were shadowed and empty, half lit by a fortune of mismatched tinker's lamps set in sconces on the wall. No one was about. The peace of the place was startling. It reminded her of her hidey-hole back on the
Thrift.
She stood still for a moment and listened to the nothing in the air around her. It felt clean and quiet and simple.

It was an easy matter to trace her footsteps through the empty hallway back to the little side passage outside Madame Hearth's office. The door at the end was closed. She tried the doorknob, but it was locked. No matter. The keyhole was the mouth of a cleverly carved imp's face, and it looked simple.

As soon as her pick entered the hole, she knew she was in trouble. The innards were sluggish. It reminded her of the glue of a chemystral lock, but it was more sticky.
Never pick a chemystral lock.
She tried to pull the pick from the hole, but it was stuck fast. She pulled harder. Suddenly the imp's arms lashed forward, and its hands clamped down over her wrist. The wrought-iron fingers dug into the splint and sent bolts of pain up her arm. She swallowed a yell, but that did not matter in the least. As soon as the imp had hold of her arm, it opened its mouth wide and a blast of sound came out of the keyhole mouth.

“THIEF! THIEF HERE! THIEF!” It sounded like a lion's roar in the close passageway. Ruby pulled harder at her wrist, and it moved just slightly inside the splint.
Sears of fire ripped about inside her arm.

“THIEF! THIEF HERE! THIEF!” Then the imp began to weep. Red tears welled up in its eyes, trickling down its arms. Ruby grabbed her elbow with her other hand and pulled harder. The tears flowed from the imp's claws onto her shirt and burned a hole through it. She had no idea what the substance was, but she was certain she could not let it touch her skin.

“THIEF! THIEF HERE! THIEF!” She put one foot on the door and then lifted up her other to plant it on the other side. The red stuff was eating through the wood of the splint now. She pulled with all her might, and her arm slipped through at the last moment. She fell to the ground hard. Her shirt was shredded, and the splint was a mess, but thankfully her skin looked intact. The remains of her pick had liquefied, and the rest of the ring clattered to the floor. Cries echoed down one of the hallways. They would be on her in seconds.

The little imp's arms were still clutching at her. She grabbed her thickest iron tension wrench, and her wrist twanged with pain. She jammed the wrench into the arms
and the neck of the little artifice, pinning them against the door. The thing squeaked in surprise, the tears from its eyes running backward down the door. A drop of acid landed on the joint of her thumb and burned a hole down into it. She stifled a yell. One handed, she stuck her alloyed glass pick back in the keyhole. The tumblers started to move, but then the pick inched forward. It was melting. Fifteen seconds later her finest pick was a stub, but she was through.

The room was cozy as when Ruby had left it, and quiet. The weathered journal still lay on the table next to Madame Hearth's chair. The clasp with its circular eye stared at her. She took it without thinking. It belonged to her. She also swiped a fat little pocketbook lying on the mantel. If Hearth wanted her to have “low cunning,” then she would have it.

The first time she had been in this room, five people had been here, some sort of council. When she had reentered, minutes later, only one was left. So where had they gone? She stood very still.

A breath of cool air touched her skin. It did not come
from the vent. It came from an armoire in the corner.

Could it be that easy?

The closet was made of rosewood and carved with scenes of family and home. She opened it. It was empty, and the draft was more pronounced. A more cautious or suspicious person might have put in a series of false shelves or backs or even simply hung some stupid dresses, but there was no reason to hide the door from this side. There was a small handle on the back wall, and it opened easily. A chill breeze hit Ruby in the face, and a steep tunnel rose up away into the dark.

She stepped through the door and closed it. On the tunnel side it was covered with stone, and it closed with a click, presenting a seamless rock face. The air smelled crisp and clean, and Ruby ran up the slope of the tunnel toward freedom.

Providence gives, the where we start.

Science asks and shines a light.

Fortune shocks, an unseen road.

Spirit fires and burns life bright.

—Children's rhyme, Conrado Flacian
,

Pilars Cuatro,
1688

T
he thought of Bluestockings behind in the distant dark spurred her on, through the steep tunnel to a square room at the bottom of a flight of stairs. She had taken the Bluestockings for a strange band of hayseeds on the edge of the city, but if they had access to something like this, their influence might be wider than she imagined. She had dropped a line in the water, and she had hooked a whale. Well, Madame Hearth and her bookworms
could get in line. The Reeve, the Royal Navy, the Tinkers, Grundwidge Fen, and who knew who else was already hunting her. The endless stairway finally ended at another hidden door.

The door led into a tiny courtyard with odd walls, one of those unused orphaned spaces that no one knew what to do with. A cloudy winter sky hung above, and fresh snow dusted the alley beyond. She had climbed all the way through the Lid into UpTown.

She headed down the alley, and it opened onto the posh cobbles of Bluestone Square, where the rich and powerful lived their lives and kept their pets. People who lived in the square were still abed, waiting for their servants to awaken them gently with fresh chocolate and savories. The hawkers were already out in the bright early-morning flurries. The smell of roasting pine nuts lured Ruby and her tight stomach toward a chemystral meat cart, and there they were, two redcoats breaking their fast on sizzling raccoon shanks. She could not turn her face away in time. One of the uniformed men looked from her, down at a piece
of paper, and back at her. The other was nodding and already jogging toward her.

Ruby ran.

The crown had not stopped looking for her.

She finally lost the first two redcoats by wiggling through a gap in two row houses that was too narrow for them to follow. But by then the alarm had been raised, and in this neighborhood she stuck out like a wasp in a jar of butterflies.

Every time she evaded some, more popped up around the next corner.

She cut through a market tent full of sunflowers and wriggled under its back. She lost three more by squeezing past two close-set buildings. On the other side of the alley, the close walks echoed with the metallic snuffling of gearbeasts and the sharp cries of their handlers. She kept them out of sight, but they gained on her turn after turn after turn after turn.

Her legs were stone and her chest was fire as she rounded a corner into a narrow lane. It was strangely
quiet, that odd slice of peace that you could happen upon sometimes in this city. Well-scrubbed cobblestones. On one side was a tidy set of brick row houses screened shyly behind bare maple trees in tiny stone courts. On the other was a tall, dark iron fence, the spikes so closely set together that they would be impossible to slip through, interrupted by a stout gate halfway to the corner. At the end of the lane lay another market square, where she could escape from the gearbeasts in the sheer press of the crowd. But at the entrance to the square, a familiar hulking shape sat on the corner of a low stone fence, eating an apple as if he had been waiting there for her for a good, long time.

Wisdom Rool bit into the apple. The rope scars even traveled across his clean-shaven mouth.

“Ruby Teach, you have led us a merry chase.”

Behind her a man and a woman, clad in black like Rool, pulled up, breathing steadily, cutting off her escape. There was a gearbeast with them. Though their howls had haunted her sleep since the
Thrift
, Ruby had never seen one up close. It was built like a hunting hound, lean
and agile, but without skin. You could see down to its metal bones and hinges, all a deep dark blue. Spinning wheels and pumping pistons wrestled in its wide chest, and the
tocktocktocktocktock
Ruby had heard in the ship's hold cut through the cold morning air. Its three-inch claws raked at the street, opening little furrows in the cobbles. The whole thing was metal, except for the sockets, which held the wild, staring, mad eyes of a once-living dog.

She could not help backing away and pulling at the door set into the iron fence. It did not budge. Its lock was black, sturdy, and well made.

“Locked, is it?” Rool was still sitting on the little stone wall, and he motioned her pursuers to stay where they were. His eyebrows arched. “Can you pick a lock before we can get to you? My wager is no. Not that one at least. And do not waste your breath calling for help. This is a street of law-abiding folk who have no quarrel with officers of the crown plucking up some young roustabout.”

They remained like that, unmoving, until he finished
the fruit, core and all. She tried to control her ragged breath and cast about for an exit that was not there.

Rool wiped his hands on a handkerchief, which he tucked back into the pocket of his plain black vest. “Quite a pickle, don't you think?”

Ruby did not answer.

“Beasts behind you, Wisdom before you. Which will you choose?” He stood, and his voice was gravel. “I can take you to your father, you know. We are less than a quarter mile from the Benzene Wharf.”

“Is he all right?”

He nodded. “Wayland Teach is safe.”

“Why did you take him?”

Rool shrugged. “We were searching for you. The
Thrift
was merely the place where you happened to be.”

“Why me? What am I to you?”

He chuckled. “You are
of use
to me, Ruby Teach. But there are better places for this conversation, perhaps with some food and drink in you. You look terrible, you know.” He wrinkled his nose. “And the smell! Where have you been hiding?” How could he smell her? He was a
good forty paces away. Before she could answer, he raised his hand. “That was impolite of me. A girl must have her secrets, and I shall not pry.”

“Where is Gwath?”

His lips turned up slightly. “A man must have his secrets as well. If you come along, I am full willing to trade.”

Ruby leaned into the handle of the gate to hold herself up. Was he alive after all? Did they have him in a cage somewhere? Or was he at the bottom of the Delaware River?

“Come with me, and all will be revealed. You have many questions, do you not?”

She was so tired. She thought of her hidey-hole in the hold of the
Thrift
and the safety there. All she wanted was to curl up in the corner against the dark wood, losing herself in the quiet, harmless sounds of a calm day on the water.

Rool was planted on the cobbles: a statue of a fierce general from a forgotten war. “Why not just give in?”

It may have been the way he said it. Or perhaps it
was the faintest whiff of triumph lurking behind the question. Whatever it was, it irked her. And that was enough to help her say what she needed to say.

She pulled her shoulder blades down her back and found her balance, standing straight as the wall of iron spikes behind her. “You may have me trapped, sir. With your men and your walls and your iron dogs. And you may take me, as you say. But I will not go willingly. I will not give in.”

Something flared in Wisdom Rool's eyes just then—respect?—but she was distracted by an unexpected, wonderful, and faint-as-a-feather click. The latch of the gate had just, inexplicably, unlocked.

Wisdom Rool said, “So be it,” and took a step forward.

Ruby did not waste her breath on prayers or curses. She hauled on the door. The heavy thing pulled open, and she dashed into an orderly garden and jerked the door closed behind her. A man stood in the doorway across the garden, and she sprinted toward him. Outside the fence the other reeves were yelling and the
gearbeast was yowling with strange rage.

The man in front of her was tall with long white hair, dressed in plain dark wool. He motioned her inside, saying, “We grant thee refuge, but I fear what may happen if thou stay. Keep moving. Down the hall, straight as an arrow, through the big room, up the stairs to the round window, and then onto the rooftops. Safe passage to thee.”

She hesitated. Behind him, through the narrow gaps in the iron fence, tall as trees, she saw Wisdom Rool
leap
to the top, grabbing the sharpened spikes. He held himself there, peering over into the court, blood from his hands painting the dark iron of the spikes. He was breathing heavily. “You gravely mistake, Elder,” he said to the man. “That girl is mine, and you risk much by sheltering her.”

“She is not willing, Reeve.” The man remained still. “And we offer shelter to ones who would not be taken.” He turned to her. “Go, girl. We can hold him for a time.” Rool vaulted over the fence into the air, and Ruby ran like her feet were on fire.

The hallway was straight and walled with plain blond wood, and it opened into a much larger room, like a feasting hall, completely empty save a circle of chairs in its center. People sat in many of them. The same dark, simple clothing, most sitting motionless, though she paid them little mind. Her whole self was consumed with getting to the archway at the other end and the stairs beyond. She cut an arc around the circle, and halfway across Ruby realized she could not hear her footsteps. She heard no sound whatsoever. Not even the din of her tearing each breath from the air. And the men and women in the circle did not move, even to look her way.

So she ran through silence across the hall certain that Rool would catch her. She crossed the archway back into a world where footsteps and lungs were loud, and at the base of the stairs she risked a glance over her shoulder.

The men and women in the circle had not moved, but halfway across the room Wisdom Rool was frozen in midair, mid stride, captured in quiet. A drop of blood from his hand sat in the air halfway to the floor, like a fly
in amber. His eyes were alive on her, and rage lit them.

Ruby bowed to him and then to the room. Then she took the stairs two at a time, three floors up to a pretty round window that opened onto the roof. She skittered away across the rooftops, high above the hunters and gearbeasts scouring the streets below.