A Riddle in Ruby (8 page)

We are the seekers in the night,

We forge on when all are spent,

We harry the guilty and punish the wicked,

We are England's arm,

We are England's bones,

We are England's hammer.

There is no rest, there is no pain, there is no barrier

Until our shores are safe.

Oath of the Reeve

T
he man stood in the aft of the little tug and bobbed up and down with ease, like a bug on a branch. His breeches and coat were dark, lightweight wool, and his face was cheerfully empty. He reminded Ruby somehow of Gwath.

“Heeeelp!” She tried to regain the initiative. This man knew her, but she had never seen him before. Why was he looking for her?

“You are safe!” he called.

“But where is the crew?” Ruby called back. Gwath had called the scams and con games they ran sharps, and Sweet and Fearful was one of her best. Marks saw a harmless girl, paralyzed with fear, and they would run down the alley to her aid; Gwath would clean up from there. It helped that she truly was terrified. She wailed, “They've all disappeared. I fear what may happen to me!”

“Now, now, Miss Teach. I have informed you that we shall find a way to get you down from the
Thrift
, and that is exactly what we shall do. Please allow me and my companion some little time to hatch a stratagem.”

“Can't you just reel us in? Where is the crew? Who are you?” She knew full well the answer to the first question but thought that might unstopper a talkative man in the direction of the second and third.

“Point the first. I imagine you know that we can't get too close to the
Thrift
. She is heavier than we are, and Squires in the wheelhouse is having a tricky enough time bringing her in on the open sea without having her crush our tinker's wheel here to bits.” He brushed his thick fingers over the paddles as they dived past him into the
waves. “Point the second. Perhaps we can speak of the crew when we have you close and safe. As for me, my name is Wisdom Rool. I am special envoy to Parliament and first captain of the Reeve of England. Delighted to make your acquaintance.” He sketched her a bow across the water and then turned and disappeared into the wheelhouse.

As soon as he was inside, Ruby jumped to the deck.

“Just what do you think you're doing?” Athen hissed, crouched out of sight under the railing. “You have compromised our tactical advantage at the very least.”

Cram was less diplomatic. “That was dead stupid, girl.”

“Do you have a better plan?” Ruby attacked. “They could be towing us who knows where, to a base with more men, or farther from my father and the crew.”

“And that other ship might be hightailing it back at any moment,” Cram said.

“If it is, we are lost already,” Ruby cut in. “Let's get back to the wave in front of us.” She turned to Athen. “Can you and your man help me with yon great stack of pork?”

The dandy leaned in. “Our alliance has never been in question for my part. You, if I recall, were the one who kicked me in the face.”

Ruby reddened. “I asked you a question.”

Somehow Athen bowed from his knees. “I am, of course, at your service, milady.”

She turned to Cram. “And you?”

Cram frowned even deeper. “Mam always said the only way to snuff a real fire was to throw family at it until it goes out. The more family you got, the more it spreads out the burnin'.” He tapped his nose and gave her a look that he must have thought looked wise.

“I'll take that as an aye,” Ruby said. “Keep an ear out for a change in the wind. I'll try to call out anything I can to help.”

As she scrambled back up to Fat Maggie, Wisdom Rool called out from below. He had returned to the stern. “Miss Teach! Welcome back. I had begun to think I might need to navigate this crevasse without your pleasant company!” His speech was fine, but there was no feeling behind it. It gave her the itches. He was kneeling down at
a heavy metal box and was sorting through its contents. His waistcoat and shoes were off, and he was down to vest, shirt, and breeches. He wore strange stockings that exposed his big, knobby toes.

Ruby went fishing. “Have you a plan? Will you be sending your men aboard somehow, or help us down?”

Wisdom Rool smiled as he pulled a thick glove out of the box. It fitted over his massive hand halfway up the forearm and looked metallic. For a moment Ruby thought it might be a gauntlet of iron or steel, like those knights wore in olden times, but the way it flattened to his skin and rippled in the sunlight made her think of cloth or snakeskin rather than metal.

“Alas, I have no squadron of bravos, Miss Teach. They have left me behind with only a skeleton crew. We are a complement of two, Squires and I, and he needs must stay at the wheel. I am but a boarding party of one. I trust that you have not prepared an ambuscade for me?” He smiled. Ruby clenched her teeth. “I hope you have no hidden compatriots ready to fall on poor me at a moment's notice?”

“Course not.” Ruby's lie sounded weak to her own seasoned ears. “It's just me up here.”

“I am glad to hear it,” Rool said. “That way our relations can continue to be cordial. Otherwise, things might go another way, which neither you nor I might prefer.” He pulled the other glove on, and it fitted as tightly as the first. He stood and rolled his shoulders around, then tucked a large bag into his belt.

“What are you doing?” Ruby asked.

“Why, I'm coming up there to see you, Miss Teach, so that I can help you down here to safety,” he said. “And if you will not come down, I shall pop you in this sack like so much market day baggage.”

Then he jumped into the air. At first Ruby thought the man had gone mad and was throwing himself into the deep. But he caught himself on the thick, greasy rope, and he hung there easy as you please. Then he began to climb. He swung himself forward and up, muscles bunching under the thin wool of his vest. His other mitt followed the first, and he pulled himself hand over hand up toward Ruby. He was moving quickly, far too quickly,
with no sign of effort, legs dangling over the hungry waves.

Ruby muttered over her shoulder, “Ready for it? He is coming quick!”

There was no response.

“What was that, Miss Teach?” Rool interjected as if he were at a garden party. He was halfway across the gap now and if anything was gaining speed.

She risked a glance behind her. Cram was standing there wide-eyed with a boat hook dangling from his hands. Fear had stuck him to the deck. When Ruby gave him the stinkeye to get him to move, he shook his head vigorously and even took a step backward. Lord Athen was nowhere to be seen.

Ruby cursed under her breath. A life on the
Thrift
had taught her some phrases that might light a parson's wig afire. She used them all in rapid succession. She shifted her feet backward along Fat Maggie's rail toward the deck.

“Careful there,” Wisdom Rool counseled, hanging by his hands not two man-lengths from the railing. “Without
gloves like these the basaltic cables can be quite slippery.” This close she could see that it was not just his hands that were scarred but his face, feet, and neck, too. Every inch of his skin was covered with ropy trails that looked like some devil's mad quilt.

Ruby reached the edge of the figurehead, without slipping, thank you, and clambered down to the deck. Neither Cram nor Athen was anywhere to be seen. Cowards, both of them. She turned back to the prow to see Rool loose one hand and swing himself like a jungle beast to grasp on to the railing right next to Fat Maggie's belly.

Nothing for it, Ruby thought. Head straight for the storm. She pulled her knife from under her dress and rushed forward to slash down at Wisdom Rool's glove just as he was swinging his other from the hawser. She hit something, she was sure of it, though he made no sound. His hand disappeared from the railing.

The other hand did not land on the railing.

Just like that, the man called Wisdom Rool was no longer hanging from anything. She rushed to the edge
to try to spot him in the water, but she did not need to look far.

He was hanging there, halfway down the hull of the
Thrift
, feet dangling above the water below. The tinker gloves were pressed flat against the hull, and he was clinging with them like some kind of huge fly. He looked up at her, and he smiled.

He levered one hand loose, the thick muscles on his back shifted, and he threw the hand higher. Somehow it stuck to the hull. This way he began pulling himself upward. Ruby whirled to see Athen framed in the opening to the hold. She would have flayed him alive if she had not been so happy to see him.

She waved him over, holding a finger to her lips. His eyes widened, and he hurried quietly up the stairs. He had gone back for his cloak. Ridiculous. She pushed him in the shoulder and almost knocked him from the forecastle. She reached out, horrified, but he caught himself with one hand on the railing and one to her wrist. He had small hands, but an iron grip inside those gloves.

He stared at her for a moment, hard. She shrugged
an apology and pointed at the place where Rool had gone over the side. He hadn't come up yet, but she knew it was only a matter of time. Athen scanned the deck for Cram and grimaced when he saw the servant had run. There would be many reckonings if they all made it through this. Ruby pulled her other knife from its hiding place. She had never fought anyone before, but Gwath had taught her what to do. She hoped she wouldn't crack.

Athen's eyes were all wild, and he grinned at her. He drew his sword. It made a small, leathery scrape as it came out of his scabbard. In
Bastionado
swords hissed and sang. The blade widened into a heavier diamond-shaped cross-section at the hilt. Ruby hoped he knew how to use it. He wound his other hand deep into his cloak and nodded at her.

They crept to the railing, the sound of the waves accompanying their progress. Athen mouthed counting to three, and they both popped their heads over the edge.

Rool was not there.

“Rudimentary,” rumbled a voice from the other side of Fat Maggie. Ruby whirled. Rool was crouching on
the railing as if it were his favorite rocking chair. “Why would I climb back up to have you stab me once again, Miss Teach? That was inhospitable.” He assessed Athen. “Will you introduce me to your friend? No? That is a fine blade, young man. I would suggest you sheathe it before one or more of us are harmed. I am unarmed, as you see.” He spread his hands wide. The gauntlets up close seemed to be covered with a fine layer of scales. Blood trickled from the right one down his arm. “I fear that a friendly solution is past us, but we can still have a result where no one is irredeemably damaged.”

“Your words are wind, sir,” Athen responded. He took a small step to the right, point aimed at the much larger man's right eye. “You are hardly unarmed. I know a Reeve when I see one.”

“And I know what I see, as well,
sir
”—Rool laughed—“though Miss Teach may not.”

Sometimes things happen very quickly.

Athen uncoiled like a spring and lunged forward, point dropping, to try to take Wisdom Rool in the chest. Feet balled beneath him, the big man could not have
dodged to the left or right. He tried to do neither. Instead, he jumped upward, tucked his legs in a somersault over Lord Athen's outstretched blade and landed upright behind him. Rool spun and clubbed Athen brutally between the shoulder blades with one gauntleted fist and aside the head with the other. Athen crumpled to the deck insensate.

The scarred man turned to Ruby as she ran toward him, knives ready, yelling with either fury or fear, she did not know which. He brushed her aside with one massive hand, and she flew through the air to crash against the outer rail near Athen. The bulkhead gave her a nasty knock on the head as she landed, and she struggled to stay conscious. Little purple halos surrounded everything. Bells were ringing somewhere. She looked up, and Wisdom Rool was standing over her. He was saying something, but she couldn't hear it. She was at the bottom of the sea. He laughed, and then he pulled the sack from his belt. She scraped her feet against the deck with what little strength she had left and pushed herself backward.

Rool opened the sack. Suddenly his eyes widened in suspicion. He whirled, but it was too late. A man rushed toward him, someone Ruby had feared she would never see again. Gwath was brandishing, of all things, a heavy iron stewpot. He swung the pot around like a Titan, and it slammed squarely into Rool's chest. Rool flew into the air, over Ruby, and over the rail. Gwath sprang forward to peer over the railing.

Now where has he been hiding? she wondered as she drifted off to sleep.

I, Tom Givens, foreman at the Benzene Yards, have for some time been troubled with a Wracking Cough. Upon the prescription of one Doctor Argosy, 8 Seraphim Court, Shambles, I have begun each morning with a Heaping Spoonful of Mercury. Since then, I find myself Light at Heart and Steady in my Chest. I do heartily recommend his services to all who may labour under the same Distemper.

—Advertisement,
The Onlooker,
September 22, 1718

R
uby woke. Above her were the points of a thousand knives. She raised up on an elbow, but the starlight and the moon cut into her eyes in earnest and a band of fire tightened around her head. She lay back, shut her lids against the annoyingly cheerful heavens, and attempted to get her bearings.

The rough, soft pillow cradling her throbbing head smelled of sawdust from the carpenter's shop. They had
bags of the stuff down there. She knew the feel of the
Thrift'
s deck against her hands the way other children knew sums or Bible passages. She breathed in the sea, wrapped herself in the bass creak of the masts, and relaxed into the timbers. She was still home at least.

The moments before her blackout danced away from her stumbling thoughts. There had been a fight. Athen hurt. Rool had thrown her. She had smashed her head against the rail. Then what? The terrifying man flew through the air over the rail. And Gwath. Gwath had been there! The whole series of events flew back into her mind, and she forced her eyes open, propping herself up on her elbow, steeling herself against the pain.

“Gwath?” she rasped. Thunder in her skull. Her throat was dry.

Someone groaned behind her. She turned slowly, wincing, to see Athen, propped up against a sack of cornmeal. He looked like a sack of flesh himself, a broken marionette flopped there in the moonlight.

“What happened?” he muttered, reaching up to rub his temples but stopping with a hiss. “Where is Rool?
Did you fight him? Are we captives?”

A small part of her thanked him for even thinking that she might have been able to hold off that force of nature. The larger part of her, however, focused on the small piece of parchment she found tucked under the bag of sawdust.

It was one of Gwath's drawings, sketched lines that suggested shape, rather than defined it. Two figures stood back to back on a ship, weapons drawn, and one cowered in the hold. Circling the ship was a shark, covered with ropy scars. A shadowy squid stalked the shark. Rool was alive, and Gwath was hiding, hoping to flush him out.

“Miss Teach?” Athen pressed.

“It was Gwath.”

“The cook? Where is he?”

“I don't know.” Where had he come from? Why had he hidden himself from her?

“Where did you go?” Ruby asked.

“To the hold, to get my cloak.”

She gave him a look.

“You would be surprised what a skilled duelist can accomplish with a cloak in the off hand.”

“I will be sure to keep an eye out when I meet a skilled duelist,” she snapped.

Athen tightened his lips and did not respond.

“We should get out of the open,” she whispered. “This feels too exposed.”

He tensed. “You think that—”

“I am not sure, but I would just as soon not have some demon man drop out of the rigging on me like a sack of coal.”

He cast a glance over his shoulder and levered himself slowly up to standing. “Come on.” She grabbed the hand he offered and pulled herself up next to him.

Athen was not a brute of a boy, perhaps a head taller than she. But he had fought beside her, against a terrible opponent. He had a weight about him. He carved space somehow. He was more
here
than anyone she had known, even Gwath or her father. And there was something else, too, right now, prowling about behind the stars reflected in his eyes—

Wait.

Ruby pushed Athen away to get a better look at the lights in the distance.

“Those are not stars.” She pointed at the base of the horizon.

“Ruby—” Athen turned to her. “Wait, what?” He followed her arm and stared at the cluster of sparkles, wavering in the mist. “That is a city.”

They had turned up a wide river. Ruby checked the shoreline, casting about for a landmark. She recognized nothing. She felt a little dizzy. “Yes, and even though this tug is slow, I'd say we'll be there by morning. Come on.” She pulled his arm toward the hold.

She hurt all over. She pushed the pain and the moment from her mind, and they tottered toward the steps of the deck, clinging to each other like an old couple she had seen once on the courthouse steps in Charles Towne.

Athen stopped for a moment at the top of the stairs. He stared down at the deck, avoiding her eyes. “I didn't know he would be so fast.”

Ruby nodded and clapped him on the back. “Now we do know.” It sounded hollow. She couldn't think of anything else to say.