A Riddle in Ruby (21 page)

She could have bashed her head on the table. “Fine. My problem is that I am trapped inside the upside-down tower of a madman.”

He chuckled. “Clever, but symptomatic. The madman's tower is only a stop along the way.” He moved his head about on his impossibly long neck like a tulip in the breeze. “What is your problem?”

“I need to rescue my father.”

“Good! Why?”

“What do you mean, ‘Why?' He is my father!”

He nodded. “Yes, but why is he in danger in the first place?”

“Because Wisdom Rool was pursuing us.”

“Why?”

“He says I have something he wants.”

“Good, good.” He chalked,
ARUBA TEACH HAS
_________.
“What is it? I have seen the contents of your bag. They are not very impressive. Was he searching for your copy of
Bastionado
, do you think?”

“No.”

“Perhaps that?” He pointed to Ruby's mother's journal.

She ran her finger along the binding. “But I did not have this on the
Thrift.
”

“I see. Anything else?”

“No.” This was frustrating.

“Well, then?” He pulled a set of red-tinged spectacles from the sleeve of his robe and stared at her for a good long while.

Ruby looked at the lock. But it was not a lock. It was something else. Ah. She reached out her hand to Fermat. “May I?”

He stared. “Please.”

She took the chalk and used the rag next to the slate to erase the word “has.” In its place she wrote:
ARUBA TEACH
IS
___________
.

She handed the chalk back, and he clacked his teeth. “Good. Now we begin.”

Dr. MAGRABO'S CARNIVAL OF WONDERS

The Great Bavillia, she Communicates with

the Immortals of the Spheres!

Myrtle, an Artifice Sheep with powers of Speech and Arithmetic!

The Nameless Brothers, Bearers of Talents Both Strange and Terrible!

Samples of Dr. Magrabo's Elemental Elixir, FREE!

Spinner's Square, Shambles, Promptly at Dusk. 5p, young ones gratis.

—Poster

I
t went against every feeling in her body, but Ruby agreed that she would wait.

Upon the conclusion that Aruba Teach did not carry but in fact
was
something valuable, Fermat had transformed into a gleeful young boy. He produced sheaves of papers, pens, inkpots, rulers, divining rods, and a chest's worth of simple and complex measuring apparatuses. Some were gooey, some made noises, a
few looked never used, and many were so old that she feared they might fall apart at any moment. In the hours that followed, he used them all. What was worse, she could never just sit in a chair quietly. “Excitation of fluids” required that she stand on one leg, “conservation of energy” required that she curl up inside a series of smaller and smaller cabinets, and “isolation of humors” meant hanging upside down from the chandelier.

Early on, when he was dipping strips of linen in an iron jar full of yellow goo that smelled like a diseased cow and sparkled in the lamplight, she asked him again when she could leave. He spared her the briefest of glances from his quicksilver eyes and said, “You may not leave until we know what you are. You need power. And power will come from knowing what this secret is. And that knowing can only be discovered here.”

The passing of each moment ate at Ruby as he picked, poked, and prodded. The aged wonder looked to have the endurance and maniacal focus of a puppy with a brand-new stick.

“Ow,” she said when he tightened the clamps yet again.

“What is wrong?” he asked.

“They are too tight,” she replied, reaching up to try to pull it from her head. He slapped her hand away.

“Too tight?” he asked. She tried to nod. “Are you certain?” he asked.

“Yes!” she cried. “Yes, yes, yes! This thing is too tight. Everything you have put on me smells of pig iron or dead fish, and this was not part of my plan.”

“What plan?” he asked.

“To . . . rescue . . . my . . . father.” She kicked at the chair with each word.

“That again? You would travel alone to the Benzene Yards, the great stronghold of Tinker strength, and onto the behemoth His Majesty's Ship
Grail
?
Sashay past their automatons, their human guards, their gearbeasts, and a whole chestful of sensitive traps, devices, and anti-theft shearsaws?”

“Yes. Shearsaws?”

“Indeed. Alone?”

“Yes, if you will not go with me. Or Nasira.”

“I have told you, I cannot go with you, and I am sure you have never even seen the devastating effects of a shearsaw. Nasira cannot leave. She has sworn a holy oath to protect me. And Hermes”—worry crossed his face—“Hermes is still missing. I fear what may have happened to him after leaving you on the stairs.”

She still could not understand why he had left them. “If he had not helped us, we were done and dusted. I hope he's all right.”

“I hope so, too. Open.” She opened her mouth, and he placed a smoky glass tube in it. It was rough on her tongue and tasted like licorice. He watched it carefully.

“Why not come with me?” she muttered around the tube. “Surely you are the greatest Tinker who has ever lived. You could bring down the walls of the Benzene Yards with a wave of your hands and a puff of your breath.”

“Possibly,” he clacked. “Open wider. No, not tall, wide. The edges of your mouth. Good.” He removed the tube and began to swirl it in a cloudy glass beaker.
It changed to a pale blue. “You flatter well. Even if that were true, I am not lying when I say I cannot leave this place.” He stuck her with a sharp metal point tied to a glass bulb, and the ampule began to fill with blood.

“Ow!”

“Show me your strength. A pinprick is no great suffering.”

“It is when you operate the pin. Why can't you leave?”

“How old do you think I am?”

She whistled. “At least seventy.” She added, “You move about well, but your hands and neck tell the tale.” The backs of his hands were a riot of wrinkles and spots, and the wattle of his neck waggled like a flag in a strong breeze when he laughed.

“Ha! A well-founded supposition but slightly on the low end.”

“Seventy-five?”

“Guess again.”

“Truly?”

“I am one hundred seventeen years old.” He tapped a few drops of the blood onto a powder-covered plate,
which he then covered with a brass bowl.

“Oh, come on.” Ruby squinted at his hands. “And what does that have to do with not being able to leave?”

“No,
vraiment
. I was born on August seventeenth, in the Year of Our Lord 1601, and I tell you this because the only reason I am able to stay alive is woven into this tower.” He waved vaguely around him, up into the rafters.

“How? How is it woven in?”

He smiled sadly. “Science costs,
ch
é
rie
.”

“Well, that is sad and mysterious, and I appreciate your hospitality, I do, but I need to go.”

“I am sorry, but I cannot let you leave unaccompanied.”

“I am sorry, but I am thirteen and you are one hundred seventeen, and you could not stop me from making a cup of tea.”

“Do you truly believe this?”

She sighed. Aside from Nasira, who was strong as an ox and agile as a wolf, there was something about this place and this man that
seethed
power. She did not want to get on the wrong side of that, and besides, she had
grown to like the old madman and could not bear the thought of defying him. Plus, he was right. She needed to understand what she carried. It felt, in an odd way, as if he had saved her life. Not just the “being alive” part. It felt as if he had saved the part of her that helped her feel alive. She could not cross him.

She shrugged. “No. No, I think I do not believe that.”

“Good.” He pried her nostrils open and looked up into her nose with a magnifying glass, then began writing down his observations. “And I, for my part, am sorry that I cannot let you leave. I had hoped that Hermes would return, so that he could accompany you, but that seems less and less likely. We are at an impasse.” He removed the bowl from the plate.

The powder was completely gone.

In its place was a tiny statue, red as blood and a riot of curves and curlicues. “Now this. This is interesting,” he breathed.

That was when the raven squawked three times. The beautiful slate carving perched on a shelf next to the archway into the library. Its eyes looked almost alive.

Fermat put down his pen and turned to the raven statue, then back to her. “Did you hear that?”

Before she could respond, the statue squawked again, three times.

Without a never-you-mind, Fermat began unlatching and releasing the catches on her web of calipers, compasses, scales, and rulers.

“What does that mean?” Ruby asked. She tried to help him take off the metal calipers, but he kept slapping her hands away.

“It means,” he said as he grabbed a jeweled compass and a ten-sided lens from the far end of the worktable, “that we have guests.”

“Not the raven, the blood.” Ruby said. “Why is that interesting?”

“I will tell you, but this matter is even more urgent.” As he hurried out the archway and up the stairs, he threw over his shoulder, “Come on then.”

Ruby went.

The old man stopped next to the large metal door that led into the room with the cage and Agrippa. He
opened up a wooden cabinet set into the wall at eye level and peered into it.

“Why not use the slot?” Ruby whispered.

“That is for when I want guests to know that I am looking at them. This offers a much more complete and private view.” He clicked his teeth twice and then pulled back from the cabinet. “I do not know who this is. Do you know who this is?”

The cabinet contained two disks of smoked crystal, mounted into the stone of the wall. She put her eyes to them and could see into the room as if it were midday. There were two shapes in the cage: One was groaning, and the other was not moving.

“You can focus more closely if you squint.” She did, and it seemed as if she were right next to the cage. She had to reach out and catch herself at the sensation. It was impossible to mistake that the two uninvited guests were none other than Cram and Athena.

Cargo: None.

Passengers: 1 gentleman/fop, of England, bound for Philadelphi, 1 servant, attached to previous. I did not allow passage to donkey.

Should be fair weather and smooth sailing.

—Captain's log (secret cabinet),
Thrift,
October 22, 1718

T
he boy was heavy.

When the trapdoor had opened, Athena had tried to spin in the air to protect her blade from whatever impact awaited below but had been foiled by the flailing and screaming of her manservant. Cram's valor and loyalty had been proven often enough on this trying catastrophe of a journey, but his first reflex was always a pure and deep fountain of cowardice. He tried to climb Athena up
out of the hole like a ladder, letting loose a fierce yodeling that would put the finest Switz mountaineers to shame. Somehow the twirling, entangled mass of them had landed with her underneath. The impact had knocked her unconscious. When she awakened, her first thought was: The boy was heavy.

Truly, for someone who looked as if he had been raised on a diet of birch bark and bad advice, Cram had serious weight. “Off, Cram,” she muttered. By Science, her ribs were sore.

He groaned, but that was all.

“Off.” She pushed him, and he rolled into something that jangled. A cage then. She swallowed a curse. She had stumbled into a simple trap like the most unsharpened of apprentices. And all for the sake of this maddening girl.

The walls of the cage were sharp. Her gloves took the worst of it, but one angry barb pierced all the way through to skin. “Barnacles,” she hissed. And then she swore never to say “barnacles” again. The scrollwork was close set and strong. There was empty blackness beyond the cage. The air was fresh as well, no mean
feat in an underground cell. The Worshipful Order's extensive briefing about Philadelphi had not mentioned a place like this. Someone had crafted this stronghold with uncommon skill, grace, and secrecy. If it was not the Bluestockings or the Tinkers, that left only one suspect on this side of the Atlantic.

Her father had told her bedtime stories about Pierre de Fermat. They had never helped her sleep.

Metal screeched against stone, and a panel opened in the dark, searing light into the room. She protected her eyes. Cram groaned and pulled his tattered waistcoat over his face. The intricate cage clarified into the light, rising up high to the ceiling. Her blade was unharmed after the fall. She loosened it in its scabbard. Small comfort. Whatever sort of man kept people in decorative cages and summoned secret towers into pure stone, she would try to be ready to meet him.

Courage was exhausting. But it helped keep the fear out. She lay on the cushion and stretched back, crossing her legs. “How can I help you?” she called. “I would have my man here welcome you into our home, but we
seem to be unable to reach the door.”

“Why have you come here?” The voice came from everywhere and was edged, metallic, foreign.

“If you please, might we freshen up a bit? Is it close to teatime? I fear my pocket watch was crushed to bits in the fall.”

“Why have you come here?” it repeated.

“I am seeking a girl called Aruba Teach. She was sent here by a friend. We are friends of hers.” She hoped that was all mostly true. It was a desperate gamble to come here in the first place, especially since she had kicked Henry Collins down a stairwell into a crowd of reeves and gearbeasts. She was not proud of that moment, but Athena had a duty to the Grocers and to her father. Regret was not useful here. Nor was sympathy. Ruby seemed to be a very important piece in this high-stakes game, and she had to recapture her.

The voice returned. “Why do you seek this girl?”

She was tired of lying, and there was no tactical advantage here in antagonizing her captors. “She is important.”

“To whom?”

“To a great many people.”

“Why is she important?”

“I do not know.” Athena said it through her teeth. There was something about Ruby that was crucial to the order, but her “superiors” on this side of the Atlantic would tell her nothing of why, and her father had been silent on the matter. It chafed at her.

“If you do not know, then why do you seek her?”

“Because those are my orders.” And because she was terrified for Ruby.

Silence.

“Anyone you brought with you?”

“No. I came here by myself.”

“There is a young man beside you in the cage, no?”

“He is my servant!” Cram was still motionless in the half-light from the door, but Athena could see that his breathing was changed. The clever devil was playing possum. It was only food or the promise of food that made him stupid. Otherwise, he was quite a cunning companion. She made a mental note to feed him sparingly
if they ever got out of this alive. “This is ridiculous! Is Ruby Teach here or no? Is she safe or no? If she is not, I swear to you I will pull this tower down around your ears!”

“You lie. Ruby Teach is nothing to you.”

“No man gives me the lie. Come out from your hiding place, coward, and let us settle this!”

“Ooooh, coward is it?” The voice laughed and then went cold. “If you tell me why you truly seek this Ruby Teach, you shall see me.”

Sweat broke out on the back of her neck. The truth of it was there was no reason, no plan, no logic in the least for her actions. Ruby's disappearance had shocked everyone. The Warren had been raised in the early morning and turned upside down by Hearth, Pate, and the others. They had questioned her, and not gently, but she had been able to say truthfully that she had no idea where or how Ruby had gone.

As soon as she had pried the news out of Cram that he knew where Ruby was headed, they had collected their things and left, without even a by-your-leave to Madame
Hearth. The thought of Ruby alone, in the hands of Wisdom Rool or worse, filled her with rage and fear, and she knew only that it could not stand.

What Athena
said
was: “It is my duty to protect her.”

“So you swear? Duty, and nothing more?”

“So I swear, by Spirit and by Bacon's idols.”

And the door opened. And there was Ruby, standing there in the light in a smart suit of clothes with her hair pulled back in a tight queue. And Athena could breathe again.

But Ruby's eyes were cold. “I know for a fact that you are a cracking good liar,
Lord Athen
. But we have no choice but to test your truth. If your duty is to protect me, I hope you've learned a few tricks since the last time because you brought quite a few friends spice shopping with you.”