A Riddle in Ruby (5 page)

The little man raised his voice above the howl of the gale behind him, “Mawk needs you at the helm, Captain!” he yelled. “It's coming on out here!”

“So be it!” Teach roared. “Stow the chow and finery, Skillet. Lord Athen, I trust we'll continue another time. Gwath, help the gentleman and his man to their cabin. Aruba, bide here, lass.”

The stuffy little room burst into action. Skillet and Gwath scurried in to break down the table, and her father danced around them and out into the blow without a second word. She kept her head down and pretended to help clear the table as Gwath ushered Lord Athen and Rodent Boy (what kind of name was Cram?) out the door.

Her only company the wind and the rain, she breathed and straightened, shaking the tension out of her shoulders. Another storm weathered. The
Thrift
rolled hard, and Ruby braced herself against the wall.

One of the table legs rolled onto her foot. She grabbed
it to stow it, but her hand closed on leather, not wood. It was the scabbard of a sword, with a bronze-capped hilt. It wasn't her father's sword. He carried a cutlass.

Then the door opened. She might have turned away, but it happened too fast. She took a step back, and cold brine splashed her face. The cut under her eye burned from the salt. Lord Athen was there, staring at her. He had swung into the room, one gloved hand on the doorframe, the other outstretched. “Quick, boy, hand me that.” She held it out instinctively, and he grabbed it and launched himself into the storm. It was only after she closed the door after him that Ruby realized what he had said.

ALL AUGUST TRAVELERS

En route to and from Atlantic ports,

who wish to voyage in Style, Grace, and Comfort

WITH TRUE PIRATES!

Call upon Kevin, known as the Walrus, No. 8 Dale Street.

Inquire at dusk or after.

—Advertisement, Delaware River docks

T
he gale had come and gone like a fierce cat, tossing the vessel back and forth on the waves but losing interest after a few hours and bounding off to pounce on some other ship.

The narrow passage into the lower level of the
Thrift
was quiet in the aftermath of the storm. Most of the crew were dead to the world in their hammocks in the hold after the night's exertions. This hallway led down
only to the galley and the two small passenger cabins. The waning moon cast little light down through the hatch above.

A panel in the wall at the bottom of the stairs disappeared soundlessly, and Ruby eased her head into the gloom. She pulled herself into the hallway and closed the panel behind her. On bare feet in her work shift, dusty from the crawl through the hidden passage, she crept to the door of Lord Athen's cabin.

She put her ear against it, listening for breathing, or muttering, or she didn't know what. The servant boy, Cram, was bunked with the crew. Ruby thought for a moment about opening the door and going in there and . . . what? Knock him on the head? Truss him up like a prize calf and have Gwath throw him overboard? Neither would probably go over well with her father.

Something about this Athen just set her teeth on edge. Why didn't he reveal her secret? What did he want from her? What was in all that luggage? Clothing? Could any boy be so vain?

She turned on cat feet and crept to the galley door.
The storm latch was set, but latches had never been a problem for Ruby. She slid the thin blade of her knife through the gap between the frame and the door to pop it open without a sound.

She floated into the room and secured the door. Gwath was there, up to his armpits in a pot of stew.

“Gwath,” she whispered.

“I'm busy,” he said.

Gwath fished around at the bottom of the stewpot, shoulder deep in the rich red mixture of garlic, beans, spices, tomatoes, tubers, and who knew what else that made up his specialty, Goats in the Bilge. No one knew the list of ingredients, and Gwath would never let anyone in the galley when he cooked it.

“That is scalding! Are you all right?”

“Do I seem to be in pain?”

He didn't. She leaned back against the wall next to the stove, close enough to whisper.

“Out,” he whispered.

“I need your help.”

Gwath remained silent, sniffing at the bubbling
surface of the stew and looking as if he'd lost his favorite spoon at the bottom of the pot.

“Gwath.”

“Busy.”

“Listen, last night right before the storm there was—

“Pirate Queen,” he warned.

Ruby bit her lip. He never called her that unless he was sore with her. She changed strategy. “Why do you have your arms in the Goat?”

“You have to massage it. Otherwise it won't set right.” His brows narrowed, “Give me a moment. Can't rush a good stew.” He sniffed at the pot, grimaced, and hoisted one muscled arm out of the brew. It was completely dry.

Gwath Maxim One: “Gwath Is a Mystery. Do Not Try to Solve Him.”

He teased a leaf out of the leather pouch he always wore around his neck and crushed it, plunging the bits deep into the depths of the concoction. He took one more sniff, nodded, and then pulled both arms out of the pot dry as a sun-baked shore.

“How did you do that?” she breathed.

“What?” he said, grabbing a wooden bowl from the stack in the corner. He ladled out a steaming bowl of the Goat and passed it to her. She took it, but she knew he was trying to distract her.

“We don't have time to stuff our faces, you mound of meat,” she said.

“Eat. Maxim Thirty-two: ‘Food Feeds the Wise, and Hunger Makes for a Fool's Errand.'”

She snorted and flopped down on the ground but still tucked in with a vengeance.

“This is good, but I'm not going to sigh like some alderman's doxy and forget my own name,” she said around a mouthful of stew. “You just pulled your hands out of something scalding, and they're dry. How did you do that?”

He ladled another bowl for himself and sat down on the floor of the galley. He smacked his lips and sucked down some of the Goat.

“I'll answer your question if you answer mine,” he offered.

“Fine,” Ruby said, and then regretted it. “Make it quick.”

“Did the young sir recognize you?”

Ruby hissed, “Yes! How did you know?” The big man opened his mouth. “Don't answer. That's not my question.” She shoveled another bite into her mouth. “We need to deal with this! I could be on wanted posters from Plymouth to Charles Towne. If that happens, I'll be restricted to the
Thrift
‘for my own safety.' My father will keep me tied to his apron strings until I'm seventy-seven.”

“Your trouble, not mine. I'm not the one the young man recognized.” Gwath chuckled.

“If I go down to the bottom, I'm dragging you with me,” she said, only half joking. “I want some more stew.”

“Help yourself. What should we do? Trap him in his cabin? Thump him on the head with a caulking mallet?”

“Yes!” she whispered. “No. I don't know.” She picked up the ladle and stirred.

“Little one, I see two choices. One? Talk to the boy and charm him silent. Two? Hope that he sticks to his present course and keeps mum.”

She blew out her breath. “A tall hope, at best.” She fingered the slice below her eye. “And he will not be coaxed.”

Gwath shrugged. “Maybe take a little gander at choice three. What if I put something in his food?”

Ruby stopped stirring. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing serious, just something that might keep him ill for a few days until we get him into port and off the ship. Or perhaps Mawk bumps into the boy when he is on deck. Oops! Over the railing!”

“We are not killers.”

“Oh, really?”

Ruby did not answer. The big man finished off his bowl. He was hairless and thick muscled, wrapped in shapeless clothing, breeches and tunic made from castoff sailcloth. He had always been on her father's ship and in her life. He had taught her to sneak and hide, to pick locks and mask her appearance, to move through crowds like the wind through marsh grass.

She knew nothing else of him. Not one but a thousand questions ran through her mind. Where did Gwath come
from? Did he have any family? Why did he stay on the ship? Why did he teach her sneakery? Why did the crew step lively at his every word or gesture? How had he met her father? Captain Teach had a hundred stories about each of his crew, every one more outlandish than the next. But he never talked about Gwath.

The cook fingered the stone hoop in his ear and stood eye to eye with her.

“Queen Ruby.” The way he said it was different from before. He sounded reserved, almost formal. “You sense that there is something important about this decision. This will not be the last time. Keeping the secret of all that you are, of all that you may become, is crucial.”

“The secret of all that I am?” she said.

He opened his mouth.

A clanging stopped him. The alarm bell! Skillet was calling all hands on deck, hammering on the bell like there was no tomorrow.

The sound of sailors thumping out of hammocks and feet running on wood shattered the silence of the early morning. Gwath hesitated.

Ruby turned back to him. “What? What were you going to say?”

The cook unlatched the galley door and grinned as if the moment before had all been a joke. “Another time,” he said. “You must go to your cabin. Alarums wait for no one.”

Indeed, as Gwath moved past her to lash down the lid of the stewpot, Mawk and Jerky hustled with grim faces into the galley to help secure the rest of the gear. The moment was gone.

Skillet wasn't ringing the pattern for a reef or an iceberg or for another storm on the horizon. He was ringing to quarters. Something was coming.

She did not go to her cabin. She found her father at the stern with Skillet. The little man had relinquished his place at the wheel and was grimly sharpening the edges of his namesake, a heavy cast-iron pan that he wielded two-handed. Her father told a story about his killing a Portuguese admiral with that thing. Ruby had only seen him cook bacon in it.

Wayland Teach was looking astern through his eyepiece, a marvel of tinkercraft. There was some sort of watery stuff inside, and the green metal housing heated and pulsed when you held it up to your eye. It could see twice as far as the finest spyglass.

He was uncharacteristically silent.

He stood there for a long while, and the deck was still. Skillet's whetstone kept time with the wind. The entire crew was shoulder to shoulder on the main deck, staring up at them, bristling with the oddest collection of weaponry Ruby had ever seen. Gwath was there, with a pair of wicked-looking kitchen cleavers, Mawk had what looked to be a sharpened parasol, Pol the Gizzard had a sledgehammer studded with stones, and Frog Jerky wielded a huge haunch of swine. They looked comfortable, alert, and twelve times more dangerous than the band of harmless and good-natured scalawags that she had thought manned her father's ship. Lord Athen and Cram were standing to one side, the serving boy taking long, loving looks at the lifeboat. Athen sketched a bow to her across the deck.

Big Shem and Little Shem, the carpenters, were pulling apart a barrel on the starboard side and assembling a hidden machine from its insides. Ruby leaned over and asked Skillet, “Is that a cannon?”

He winked.

Captain Teach cursed under his breath and dropped the eyepiece. The crew watched as he cleared his throat. “They may have found us, men,” he said, and there was no trace of pirate in his tone. “It's flying Royal Navy colors, a black kraken of metal and chem. A tinker ship coming after us at full tilt, fair dancing across the waves.”

Skillet's whetstone stopped. No one spoke.

Lord Athen called from his place by the rail, “Captain, I think they may seek me.” Cram looked at the lordling as if he'd just grown another head. The crew craned their necks around to stare as if it were a lawn tennis match. The waves and wind dominated the conversation.

“Why would you say that, young sir?” Her father's tone somehow genially cut glass.

“Well, Captain, I did say I was in a touch of a hurry to reach Philadelphi.”

“Indeed, sir, but you did not deign to tell us that the undue haste was in anticipation of hot pursuit by the king of England's Admiralty.” The glass cutter was no longer genial.

“I was unsure of the response to my exit from London. It was possible I left unnoticed.”

“Possible, but not likely, given the two thousand tons of doom bearing down on the
Thrift
that will catch us within the hour. Can you tell me why I shouldn't just lower sail, let them approach us, and turn you over?”

“Perhaps they are searching for you?”

“Explain yourself.”

Athen reached down to his belt.

Twenty dangerous men raised knives, pans, tools, sharpened umbrellas, and a heavy hog's leg.

Athen raised a letter, sealed with wax.

“I had thought to give you this when we arrived in Philadelphi. I do not know the entirety of its contents, but I was told to give it to you if circumstances warranted.”

“Pol,” Teach snapped, and the skinny mate shouldered the sledge, snatched the letter from the gentleman's hand,
and hurried it up to the captain. The captain handed the eyepiece to Skillet, broke the seal, and read it. He became very still.

“Your letter is persuasive, sir.”

Athen bowed. “I am glad it proved effective.”

“Oh, indeed,” Teach replied. “Effective enough to compel me and my family to unprecedented action. I warn you, however. We compel effectively but not happily.”

Lord Athen's lips curved into a thin smile. “I have never been taught that a tool should feel anything toward its master.”

A deaf man could have heard a pin drop. In fact, Mawk dropped his teeth. The wooden ones, right out of his open gums. They clattered onto the deck in the silence.

Teach fingered his cutlass. “Perhaps, boy, if we all see the end of this day, I might offer you a moment of instruction in the manipulation of tools.”

“I am at your service, Captain.”

“Do we run or fight, Captain?” Skillet rasped from
the wheel. “They'll be on us in two snaps.” The speck to the east was growing with alarming speed.

Teach looked at Ruby for a moment, face unreadable. “Neither,” he said. “We keep on as usual. I won't throw away thirteen years of hiding in plain sight for a hunch. Crew, about your business. Lord Athen, a word.”