A Riddle in Ruby (22 page)

I care not for the quality of thy tools or thy currency. Find thee a valiant heart, and thy task is done.

—Elias Fell, Philadelphi Meetinghouse

“E
nough.” Athena Boyle rummaged in the pockets of her coat.

“We must hurry,” Fermat said, over his shoulder. The tinker's lamp he held cast his features in ghost light. This deep down the stairs there were no sconces, and Ruby thought the stones looked older or thicker, somehow, than those above.

“I agree that we must hurry, but we are traveling in the
wrong direction,” Athena said, pulling the Worshipful Order of Grocers letter from her waistcoat. “The Bluestockings followed us, and they have surrounded your shop, but they are our friends in this. I see no quarrel here. In fact”—she grinned—“this strikes me as a meeting of long-lost allies.” She presented the letter with a flourish.

Fermat held it up to the tinker's lamp and scanned it. Ruby wanted to snatch the thing, crumple it up, and eat it. She ransacked her mind for some sort of defense, some stratagem to trip up the unstoppable force of the letter. Her father had obeyed it. The watchmen of the Warren had respected it. If Fermat was indeed part of the Grocers, no matter how charming or wise or on her side he seemed to be, he would be forced to help Athena haul Ruby back up the stairs, out of the spice shop, and into the waiting arms of Madame Hearth. Fermat glanced up from the letter, and Ruby braced herself.

He chuckled.

“Boyle.” He snorted and choked for a good long time. “You are here on behalf of
Grand Master
Godfrey
Boyle?” The way he said “grand master” sounded like the way her father called backriver bargemen “sailors.” Fermat held the lamp up to Athena's face. His quicksilver eyes widened. “Oho! Even more wonderful, you
are
a Boyle. Are you not, mademoiselle?”

Athena glanced away at the wall. “I am his daughter.”

Fermat truly began to laugh now, deep, hearty guffaws that shook his body and threatened to dislodge his nightcap. “You have been traveling with her?” He pointed to Ruby.

“Yes, that is correct. I am charged with her protection.”

“Oh, I imagine that is the case.” Fermat wiped his eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“Master Boyle and Wayland Teach have a remarkable history together, and I shall be fascinated to see how it plays out between the two of you.” He waggled the lamp to and fro, lighting first Ruby's face, then Athena's.

“What kind of history?” Ruby cut in.

“Yes, as she said. What kind?” Athena added.

“It is far too long a story to interrupt our need at the moment. I will say that they were rivals over the affections of a young lady.” His silver eyes darkened. “However, at this moment you have presented me with this letter, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And what is your demand, so that we may be perfectly correct in our interaction?”

“My man and I”—she clapped Cram on the shoulder—“will take Ruby, and you will release us back into the street, into the company of the Bluestockings with whom I came.”

“What?” It was Ruby's turn to sputter. “You said that—”

“I said that I did not think they followed me and that I did not think that I had brought them here.” Athena interrupted. “All of those things are true. However, it is still my duty to return you to a place of safety, and the only safe place for you that I know on this side of the Atlantic Ocean is the Warren.”

“This place is safe!” Ruby insisted.

“Not anymore.” Cram chimed in.

“Well, it is still somewhat secure.” Fermat chuckled. “It would take Madame Hearth and her companions a good long time to penetrate our defenses here, especially since they must operate without being detected. Still, any fortress can be breached. It was the tower's privacy that kept it safe.”

Ruby launched herself at Athena, but Cram caught her and tried to wrestle her back. “Easy, Ferret.”

“Let go!”

Athena looked sad, not triumphant. “I will tie you if you resist, Ruby.”

“You liar! You said you would protect me!”

“And so I shall, but you may also need to be protected from yourself.”

“Quiet!” Fermat barked, and they all stopped moving. “Ruby Teach, do you wish to return above with Athena Boyle?”

“No! No, I do not.”

He turned to Athena. “I must respond to your letter, must I not?”

Athena hesitated, then said, “Yes, you must.”

“Then here is my response.” The old man blinked, wrinkled flesh flickering over silver sea. “No.”

Athena was flabbergasted. “No?”

“This is not a word you often hear, I am thinking,” Fermat said. “The meaning of it is quite simple. It means—”

“I know what ‘no' means, old fool!” Athena sputtered. Then she threatened. “Think deeply on what you do here.”

Fermat's smile vanished, and his eyes shone. He handed the lamp to Cram, who took it without thinking, and he stepped in, straightening his crooked back, his neck and head looping so he was staring almost straight down at Athena. “You are clever, talented, and a child of privilege.” He clacked his teeth. “You have skill, talent, wit, beauty, and some honor, and yet in the end your actions show you as little more than a bully.”

Athena was silent.

“You know who I am?”

Athena whitened and nodded. “Fermat,” she whispered.

“I am Fermat, and you forget yourself,” he said. He turned to Ruby, who tried to remain as still as possible. “Do you know the meaning of this name?”

Ruby shook her head.

“It means that letters like this”—he held the paper between his thumb and forefinger, as if it were a particularly disgusting insect—“no longer apply to me.”

Athena rallied. “But you are part of the Worshipful Order, you still—”

Fermat interrupted, without malice. “Yes, yes, I was part of the order, but no longer.” He crumpled the paper up into his palm. “You are children playing with a blacksmith's forge, and you cannot even see the raging fire you may light in the house of your betters.” He opened his fingers and uttered a few strange words that skittered past Ruby's ears. The crumpled flower of paper blued and then crackled into a sculpture of ice. He whispered a few more words, and Ruby felt pulses of heat coming from his hand. The ice melted very quickly and ran in rivulets between his fingers to the stone floor of the stairwell. “Your chemystry is but one step along the
way, child. It is not the end of the journey.”

He wiped his hand on his robe, and he was an old man again; the little stone stairwell smelled like rain.

“Well, now, that is settled. We must hurry.” He turned and strode down the steps.

As the soft light receded down the stairway, Ruby set out after it without a word or a glance back. Cram's shuffling steps soon came after, and her heart lifted. A few moments later another set of footsteps followed, and she could not say whether she was happy or sad.

They traveled far into the earth, all fixed in their own thoughts. Ruby was certain they must be deep under the level of the ground. The steps terminated in a short hallway, which abruptly ended in a wall.

Fermat turned and raised his arms like a high priest. “I have brought you to a special place.”

“A special place?” Ruby asked. The dead end did not exactly hold promise, but Fermat knew his business, and Ruby was learning that the old coot had a flair for the dramatic. He had missed his calling selling snake oil to country bumpkins.

“The exit,” Fermat intoned, and he stalked to the far wall with one arm raised. “Is this not obvious?”

“What is obvious is that there will be some spectacular occurrence in only moments, where we shall discover that all of our preconceptions were incorrect and we shall launch onto a new journey that we could have only imagined before.” Athena barely looked up.

“Indeed, young journeywoman, one should always expect mystery.” He took a small leather bag out of the folds of his robe. “It is more courageous.”

Athena said, “Courage is rare, it seems to me. Expecting it leads to disappointment.”

“Disappointment is a part of life, my lady. We cannot control it.” He turned to Ruby. “I fear,
ch
é
rie,
that here we must part ways.”

“How?” Ruby said. Dread found her again.

“The Bluestockings could tap at my front door for ten years and never force their way in, but their poking and prodding will draw attention from greater powers. I must send you away before we erect more potent wards around the tower.”

“More potent wards? From whom?” Athena asked.

“To protect us from the Tinkers, dear girl. And the Reeve.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “The persistent and misguided Madame Hearth and her squad of dauntless educators will draw them all here. You can be sure of that.”

He looked at Ruby. “Do you trust me?”

She nodded. It was Athena's turn to snort.

Fermat continued. “I can place you close to your father. I am going to open a door, an egress away from here. It will take you to a quiet place deep inside a dockyard building of the Benzene Yards, the home of the Tinkers. Henry Collins was masquerading as a young officer, and he would come and go from his room this way. We knew that your father was close to here, Henry thought somewhere in the ship just opposite this building.”

Henry Collins knew about her father?

“Once you are through, the door will close, and you will be cut off from my help. You may stay here under my protection, if you wish, but doors like this one will soon be closed off, and I think it will be some time before they
are open again. Once the wards are raised around the tower, I will not be able to open the portal.”

Safety or danger. Comfort or family. It did not take her long to decide.

Ruby nodded. “Whatever you need to do, do it.”

Athena and Cram stood as one.

“No, thank you.” Ruby shook her head. “You tried to take me again. You are loyal to your Grocers. This is not your fight.”

“We are coming with you. You cannot go alone,” Athena said.

“How can I know you will not betray me again?

“You can't.” Fear flashed in Athena's eyes. “But we are all that you have. I have sworn to protect you. Let me prove that I am a man—I am a
woman
of my word.”

It was that last, and the fear that she saw, that helped Ruby decide. “All right.”

Athena nodded once and asked Fermat, “Do we know what awaits us?”

Fermat shook his head. “I know that the place was quiet and hidden. However, with Henry taken, we cannot
be certain it has not been discovered.”

“Very well.” Athena drew her sword. “I do not think this will be a long stay, whatever we find.”

Cram nodded and grabbed his butter churn. “Just in case, Ferret.”

Fermat looked at the three of them. Ruby had no idea what seeing through liquid metal was like, but for a moment it felt as if he were peering into her soul. Then he nodded. “Please seek news of Henry. He is dear to me.”

Ruby said, “We will.”

He produced a small clear lens from the innards of the bag. He held up the lens to his eye, turned his back on them to look at the wall, and uttered tangled words that cut through the air.

Ruby's ears popped. There was a sound like a dock settling, and a heaviness passed over, as if the tower had fallen on her. It did not hurt, though, and was gone as quickly as it came. In the wall was a rippling circle of stuff taller than a man. It shimmered, like heat on top of the southern sea.

“Thank you,” she whispered to Fermat, and stood up on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek.

“Aruba Teach,” he whispered back. “What they seek? It is in your blood.”

She came down off her toes. Her blood? “Well then, I'll have to make sure I don't lose any of it.”

Then she walked forward into the portal before her fear got the better of her.

The world turned upside down.

—Marion Coatesworth-Hay,
The Tinker's Dram,
Act V, sc. ii

C
ram swallowed a moan as his belly plopped out of his body, danced a jig in a circle around him, and then climbed back in through his spine. Wherever they were, it was dark and smelled of the sea. He shuddered.

“Are we where he said we was going?” His whisper echoed.

“Shh!” That was Ferret, he reckoned, and a moment later a sliver of soft blue lit her face. The tinker's lamp
swung around to show thin slices of their surroundings. The first thing it showed was the throbbing portal they had come through, which swirled in the air a few moments and then winked out.

A pillar.

Rough wood wall.

Then on to Lady Athena. His mistress's unguarded face held a deep, angry fear before she realized that she was lit. Fast as lightning, she slipped on her old reliable smirk. Relaxed and above it all, aloof and clever. He had first seen what lay under that mask the night that Ferret had cut out from the Warren. When the alarum bells had rung, it wasn't two shakes before she flung open the door to her room, half dressed, her true face naked for all to see. A face full of terror and confusion. As soon as she saw Cram crouched there in the hall, she had shaken it off like morning dew. But he had seen it. That wee moment, and a few others like it, were what made him want to keep his mistress safe.

He sat back on his haunches. They were in a skinny space between two walls. The faint shadows of pipe ran
along the ceiling, and the distant scent of burning iron reminded him of his time back in the Tinkers' chapter house in Boston. It seemed like forever ago.

Deary, he was hungry. He felt about in his bag for a likely-looking crust of bread and tore off a piece. The ripping made a tiny sound.

“Shh!” Athena and Ruby both whispered.

Good thing he did not need to do that again. He popped the crusty bread in his mouth and kenned his mistake too late. The chewing sounded like tearing down a plaster wall with a hammer.

“Sshh!”

They were making more noise than he was, he reckoned, but he stopped chewing. What else was he to do? Swallow it whole? They certain would not want him choking and rolling on the floor and banging about with a giant hunk of loaf stuck in his gullet.

Lady Athena had joined Ferret next to the wall, and they were passing their hands over the same part of it. Probably searching for some manner of secret portal. Between the two of them he trusted one would clue it
out sooner or later. Now that the bread had softened it chewed better, and his mind woke up. Food and sleep. Why did heroes fear the stuff? If there was one lesson he would teach to his younguns, when he had younguns, it was “Your pa always says, ‘Get your sleep and your grub settled. Then tackle the great evil on a full belly.'”

Now that he
had
at least a measure of full belly, the thought sneaked back in through the back door of his braincase. Cram had been dancing hard with the thought, ever since they had fallen down that pit in the magic spice shop.

“She needs to tell her,” it insisted.

He played coy. “Tell her what?” he said to the Thought in His Head. He did make sure to use his Head Voice, so as to not call attention. The two shadows were whispering to beat the bang in each other's ears. They were pushing and pulling on every crack, bump, and wrinkle they could find.

The Thought, curse it, tromped on his gambit. “You know what Mam always said?”

“Don't you tell me what Mam always said!” The
nerve of the thing! “You'd be nothing without me!”

“Still and all,” it reasoned, “you should have told the magician. He was deep scared for Henry Collins, and he deserved to know.”

“It weren't the right time, and it ain't the right time now.” Cram put his foot down, and it would have made more noise than the bread, but a door in the wall did indeed squeak open right where Athena and Ruby had been poking. “Now get out of my noggin. I have work to do.”

It walked off a ways, but he could feel it skulking.

Ferret fiddled with the tinker's lamp, and light crept into the room beyond. It might have been a bedroom, except it had been turned inside out and ransacked. The wardrobe was splinters and parts of uniforms were scattered all over, the sea chests had had their bottoms knocked out, and the cloth ticking of two gutted mattresses lay like snow across the top of all of it.

Ferret leaned in to the two of them. “If this is what has happened to his room, then they are on to him. I fear for him.”

Lady Athena swallowed.