The Great Unravel, page 12
part #3 of Riddle in Ruby Series
“You won’t get into trouble,” said Greta. “You are nobility. Nobility doesn’t get into trouble. It gives trouble. Generally by ordering other people to deliver it.”
“Don’t tell me about nobility,” said Lady Athena, but feeble-like. It was a surrender.
“It’s a good plan, milady,” said Cram. She looked down at him as if she were on a raft in the middle of the ocean, and he had just dropped a cannonball on her.
“Finished.” Greta shook out the dress and got to her feet. She motioned to the floor-length mirror behind them.
Athena turned and looked at herself.
She was looking at the dress, but Cram could not look away from her face. Horror, then intrigue, then speculation, then distaste flashed like quicklime over her features. “I hate it,” she said.
“I cannot believe it.” Greta was staring in the mirror, too. “You were better looking than me as a boy, and now as a girl you are twice as pretty as I.” She sighed. Her face relaxed for a moment, and something stirred there. Regret? Pain? She scooped it up again, too quick for Cram to be sure, and hid it all behind her mask of disdain. “Well, at least you hate it.” Then Greta hurried toward the back door. “Come on. It’s time to meet Reggie Shackleton.”
Greta’s lip curled up in a way Cram had seen her use only for Lady Athena.
Mam always said the best pies have unexpected depths, and Cram had been happy to discover that Griddle Van Huffridge had plenty. Once Ruby picked the lock to a back-alley gate, Griddle threaded them through an overgrown garden with the grace of a ball-tailed cat and squired them up a trellis, onto the balcony, and into the closet as if she were possessed by the spirit of Winnifred Pleasant Black. There was plenty of room. Reginald Shackleton had a closet the size of Cram’s house. Plus Cram’s uncle’s house. Plus his grandmam’s whiskey shack.
There was a problem, though.
Cram had to sneeze.
The tickle had started in his nose as soon as they climbed through the bedroom window, and it had kept on growing once the five of them had locked themselves into the capacious closet. It badgered him. It clawed at him, like a living, angry sneeze possum. He fought that possum with every scrap of his being.
He held his nose. And his breath.
Ferret looked over at him, her eyes flashing in the sliver of light creeping in through the closet door. She shook her head wildly and motioned to the three others in the closet.
Lady Athena turned him around. “Hold it,” she whispered.
Out in the bedroom the door to the hall creaked open. A posh voice warbled, “I’ll just change, and then I’m off, Grandmother! Don’t wait up!” and then the door closed.
Cram stopped struggling.
The others relaxed.
Cram sneezed. It was a giant of a snort, one of those ones that shook you from your ankles to the top of your noggin. The closet shuddered. He thought he might have gone deaf.
Ferret wrenched open the closet door and launched herself across the room onto the shoulders of a strapping youth whose hand was just inches away from a bell pull. Before you could say “pemmican stew,” Reginald Shackleton was bound and gagged on a fancy, cushiony chair in the corner of the room.
Lady Athena was breathing heavy and staring daggers at Cram. What had he done?
He sneezed again.
The window rattled.
They all froze.
Another swanky voice, this time an elderly lady’s, rasped in from down the corridor. “Are you all right, Reggiepoo? Would you rather just turn in and send your regrets? I could have Withers bring you a warming pan.”
Greta put her mouth right next to the boy’s ear. “You owe me, Reginald. Don’t think I won’t tell your parents what I know about you if you cross me. Tell Grandmama not to worry. You are very well, thank you.” On his other side Ferret set her knife against his neck. Ruby and Greta locked eyes, and Ruby nodded.
Greta pulled down the gag just long enough for the boy to call, “Er, no—no, Gramsie! No need to call Withers! I am fit as a French horn, thank you!” and then she pulled the gag taut again.
Cram thought he might sneeze again. He grabbed a pillow and put it over his face. It was very soft. Goose down. The Shackletons had excellent taste.
Ferret had walked around to the front of the boy, and she started to stare holes into his head, moving about from this side to that.
Reginald began to squeak.
“Pull the gag down. I need to hear him talk,” said Ruby.
Athena had taken Ruby’s place at his side, and she obliged. “Speak for the lady,” she said low into his ear.
“Er.” He coughed. “What should I say? Hallo, are you robbers? This is quite exciting, it is.” He turned to Griddle. “Greta Van Huffridge? Aren’t you away at school? Is this some sort of prank? Or”—a kind of dim cunning lit up his face—“induction into some sort of secret society?”
Griddle blinked. “Yes, Reggie. A secret society. Now, please answer this girl’s questions.”
“What do you treasure?” said Ruby.
The boy perked up immediately. The cords they had brought to tie him creaked slightly. Cram knew his type. He was a strapping kind of lordling, well fed, strong, emptily handsome, with the easy confidence that comes from never being denied nothing. Reggie clicked his perfect teeth in thought. “What do I treasure? Ooo, my glove collection.”
“What is your secret desire?”
“I already told you, to be inducted into a secret society!”
“What do you fear, Reggie?”
The boy frowned. “Fear?” Then he smiled. “Hmm. Never really thought much about fear. Let me see . . . I am desperately afraid sometimes that I might tear my favorite gloves when I’m riding. They are silk, you know, and—”
“That’s plenty,” said Ruby.
The professor had taken a listening post, guarding the bedroom door. “We need to do this quickly.”
Ferret nodded and said, “All right.” She took one final look at Reginald and then disappeared into his closet.
Lady Athena produced a little potion bottle out of her vest. “Drink this,” she said.
“Are you poisoning me? But I don’t want to be poisoned.”
“No, you stupid boy,” said Greta. “It’s a sleeping draft. Don’t struggle, and all will be as it was when you wake up tomorrow morning.”
“Greta, I am so sorry I called you those things. I’ll never do it again.”
“I know you won’t, Reggie.” She smiled grimly. “I know you won’t. And if you do, I’ll come back with these fine people, and we’ll do you so much worse.”
Cram wondered if Reggie was feeling true fear for the first time as he guzzled the sleeping potion, eyes never leaving Griddle’s.
He was asleep before they could handle him into his bed.
“Ruby?” Athena whispered at the closet door.
“I’m not finished.” A globbelly voice wobbled out from the closet. Sort of a cross between a frog and a pudding.
“I know. Are there any dressing gowns in there? We’re putting him to bed. I don’t want the servants to think anything is amiss if they come in during the night.”
There were some shuffling sounds in the closet, and then a dressing gown popped out. At the end of a big pale arm the hand was still the Ferret’s: little and olive.
They got Reginald ready for bed, and then there was nothing else to do but wait. They stared at one another.
“How do we get there?” said Lady Athena.
“I’m sorry?” said Griddle. She was sitting upright as a mast, fidgeting with a letter opener that could have bought Cram’s family a new house.
“How do we get there, Miss Van Huffridge?”
“Oh. Of course. There will be a Shackleton carriage down front, awaiting Lord Reggie here.” The lordling took the opportunity to snore like a startled ball-tail. “You’ll need to subdue the driver and attendant without anyone noticing and steal their livery.”
The professor took a deep breath. “Of course. It just gets simpler and simpler.”
“Of course.” Griddle missed the sarcasm entirely. “Oh, and one other thing. I assume one of you can steer such a contraption?”
Cram’s blood warmed. “Oh, I can, Miss Greta.”
“Perfect.”
And then, in a brilliant suit of party clothes, out of the closet, came Reginald.
“How do I look?” whispered Ferret in Reginald’s body. Cram’s jaw dropped. She even had his voice.
Athena looked New Reggie up and down, a smile creeping across her face. “Well, the nose is a shade fat, and one lip is a bit lazy. Besides that, I’d say you have it.”
It still boggled Cram. A Changer. Here she stood in front of him the spitting image of that same Lord Reggie sleeping in that bed.
“How do you feel?” asked Henry.
New Reggie put a fist to his mouth and burped. “Strange. Sick. Not myself.”
Cram stifled a nervous giggle.
“Can you hold it?” Athena asked. She waggled her hand. “The . . . shape?”
“I have no idea. We should get moving.”
New Reggie flapped his hands around. “Remember, if I begin to act strangely—”
Henry blinked. “You mean, other than now?”
“More strangely, I may be losing myself.”
Athena nodded. “Right. We keep a sharp lookout for broom closets, find a moment to slap you silly, and try to remind you that you’re Ruby.”
New Reggie nodded with a wild grin. “Tally-ho then!”
Griddle Van Huffridge stood at the balcony. “I am off as well. I won’t be able to get back into the Warren with the watch on the door. The Birnbaums live nearby. Their maid used to work for my family and is a friend. That is where I will be.” She smiled then normal like at New Reggie. Cram had never realized how tight she held her face until she didn’t. The girl shook her head in wonder. “You are quite something, Ruby Teach.”
New Reggie smiled a goofy smile and said, “Why, thank you, my dear. And it’s Reginald.”
Then fire bloomed in Griddle’s eyes. “I am counting on you. My father is in great danger. Promise me you will do your utmost.”
Lady Athena stepped forward bravely, but the effect was spoiled as she tripped over her hem. “We promise,” she said. She hesitated. “Do you—do you have a weapon?”
Greta blinked. “Besides chemystry?”
Lady Athena held out her sword. Cram tried to pick his jaw up off the floor. “Take this. You might need it. Besides”—she shrugged and twirled the dress—“where would I put it?”
Greta Van Huffridge sighed. But she took the sword. And then she was gone.
“I’m not certain this is a good plan.” The professor shifted his black and yellow Shackleton livery about on his shoulders, then fidgeted with the newly polished buckles on his shoes.
“Sit on your hands, sir.”
“Kevin. Call me Kevin.”
“Kevin. If you keep shifting about on that seat you will draw the wrong kind of looking, and that will be that.” The professor stopped fidgeting, which was at least a bit of a blessing. Cram tugged at the cuff on his own livery and concentrated on steering.
It would not do to crash a tinker’s carriage on a night like tonight. It had been the better part of a year since Cram had driven one of the horseless coaches, let alone a silver-plated one. He thought he should be enjoying it, but he was too nervous.
“Cram,” said Henry, and Cram followed his nod to a street cart, a lady from UnderTown, hawking roasted nuts.
The chem-soaked bandages around her head bulged at the ears; little slate tendrils crept down from the fabric around her eyes. She looked up from a customer to meet his gaze, and her empty smile chilled him straight to his soul. “Is that—”
“Like Penny,” muttered Henry. “If it’s up here, it’s spreading.”
They saw three or four other Juiced, in pairs or alone, even as they rode farther into UpTown. As the houses got bigger, the streets got more quiet. But it felt like a quiet that might bite.
As the carriage trundled past an alley that proudly proclaimed PLATINUM WAY, five shapes detached themselves from the shadows and began following the coach. Their teeth shone in the dusk.
“Cram—”
“I see ’em.” He had to keep his wits. If he started flabbering and jabbering, the professor would lose his head and then fricassee someone with a potion, and then they’d all be in the stew for sure.
“Why are they following us?” Henry eyed the flywheel amid the forest of levers and gauges in front of Cram.
“Nights like this, grudges get settled. Maybe some folk don’t care for the Shackletons.”
“Can we go faster?”
“Miss Van Huffridge said slow and steady. Nothing to see here.”
“Yes I know, but—” Henry reached out for the flywheel.
Cram wanted to slap his hand out of the way. Instead, he said, in his best Madame Hearth voice, “Keep your wits, Collins.”
Henry’s hand froze. “Was that a Madame Hearth?”
“Yes,” Cram said in the same fruity tones.
“Really spot on, Cram.”
“Thankoo.”
Henry reached out again.
Cram glanced back over his shoulder. The pack of folks was still there, just outside the light of the running lamps. Every tiny jot of him wanted to yell, “Whirl it, Prof!” and race away to safety. Instead, he said, “Quiet like, Professor. We ain’t in a hurry to get nowhere. If folks is in a hurry, other folk wonder why.”
Henry sighed.
They rolled around a corner, and there was nowhere else to go.
Across their path lay a sturdy split-rail barricade. And behind the barricade?
“The curfew.” Henry whispered a curse. “Redcoats.”
“Ice in your veins,” Cram whispered, though he felt anything but. “This is the why of why we got Lord Reggie and his papers down below.”
Their rear escort dissolved like watered wine. Before them a shadowy figure raised a tinker’s lamp and opened its shutters, casting vivid blue light across the bearer’s face.
“Hellooooo!” A ruddy moon-faced soldier trundled around the barricade and up to the carriage. Two others circled on the other side. “Lovely night tonight, innit?”
Cram started talking. Stopped. Then started again. “Yes. Yes, it is, sir. Lovely night.”
The redcoat peered, smiling, at the curtained windows, which remained curtained. “Headed to the party up at the big hoose?’
Henry cut in. “Indeed. We cannot be detained. Very important passengers.”
If they lived through this, he’d have to give the professor a long lesson in bowing and scraping. Cram let out a laugh strangled within an inch of its life. “Hahaaargle. What Kevin means to say is that while we are on a bit of a tight shedjool, of course we have all the time in the world for His Majesty’s scarlet heroes.”
The little soldier grimaced and nodded, “Thank you kindly! Haven’t heard a lot of such talk since we arrived here. We won’t take long at all. Just need a little peek inside the coach, to observe the inhabitants and papers and all.”
Cram hopped down to the cobblestones, all the while trying to quash the picture his head was giving him. The picture: Ruby a pile of Reggie-shaped goo, spread across the embroidered Shackleton cushions like yesterday’s stew. He sniffed it away and stood up straight as he could. Time to cast the dice.
He rapped on the door.
“Yooooos, Kevin?”
“It’s Karl, sir.”
“What eees it, Karl?”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but we have come across a wee roadblock, and one of His Majesty’s soldiers would like a word.”
“One moment, pleeeease.”
Sweat crept down his back. He could smell it. He wondered if the redcoat had a good nose.
The curtain opened.
CHAPTER 15
Treat others as you would have yourself treated: with grace, charm, and respect.
—Bethilda Fwallop, A Young Tinker’s Guide to Polite Society
“One moment, pleeeease.” Ruby’s chin wobbled. It actually moved about on her chin, like a mouse under a handkerchief. She wrapped her fingers around it. It shifted. And then her elbow puffed up to half again its size. She grabbed it with the other hand. Perhaps no one would notice. “How bad?” she whispered.
Across the compartment, perched on a velvet cushion and awash in a storm of lace, Athena mouthed, “Bad.”
Remember what Gwath said. Think Reggie thoughts. But between the strangeness of the new body and the panic she could barely keep her own self straight. Her sails were in tatters, and the hungry rocks awaited.
This was the time when Athena would draw her sword.
This was the time when Athena would kick open the door, knocking the soldier down into the street, and they would thunder off straight through the barricade with the redcoats on their tails.
Instead, Athena flounced up to the window, pannier hoops flaring out to fill the center of the compartment.
Oh, Providence. She was preparing to flirt.
Athena unveiled her teeth in something resembling a smile—the way a baboon would bare its fangs at an enemy—and pulled the curtain open. She unlocked the little window with a snick, and the sounds of night and street flooded in.
“Well, hello there,” she purred. But her purring was more like she had a nut stuck in her throat and her eyes were too wide and she fluttered her eyelashes with military precision and—
The redcoat took a step back. “Gah,” he said.
“Miss . . . Evallina Puddledump, at your service, my good sir.” She flipped her fan at the soldier. Where had she found a fan?
“Ahem,” said the redcoat. “Ah. Miss . . . Puddledump—”
“Of the Virginia Puddledumps.” Somehow, impossibly, her smile had grown larger. Like a sinkhole.
“Yes. Well. Terribly sorry to disturb you, but your papers, please?”
Athena reached out without a glance at Ruby, trying to keep the focus on herself. Was Reggie’s eyebrow still attached? Ruby handed over the papers and invitations, one for him and one for a guest. They were miracles of clockwork, more the thickness of a school slate than a piece of parchment, and embossed with all manner of gears that actually moved inside little crystal windows.
