The Great Unravel, page 14
part #3 of Riddle in Ruby Series
“There are so many people. How are we supposed to find our woman in this logjam?” Reginald’s voice quavered up and down on the last word.
The enormity of their task had Athena sweating. “I have no idea. Needle, haystack, that sort of thing I suppose.”
There was a chuckle.
Athena turned to Reggie. “It wasn’t that funny.”
Reggie frowned “Then why did you laugh?”
Her blood ran cold. “I thought it was you.”
The laugh came again from behind them, a low, gravel-filled chuckle filtering through the trellis of purple flowers, and a terrible scene reared its head in Athena’s mind’s eye: the Thrift’s windswept deck under a carpet of stars, blood on the boards, a merciless shadow looming over Ruby.
A scarred finger parted the purple buds, revealing the empty, feral smile of Wisdom Rool. “Why, Athen Boyle, you do clean up nicely. “
Athena flicked her wrist and dropped the knife into her hand. Next to her Reginald had gone very still, like a rabbit under a hawk-filled sky. How had Rool found them? Why was he here at all? Were they going to be taken here and now? “Sir, I am not certain to whom you refer. My name is Evallina Puddledump.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Of course, of course. My mistake. Of the Virginia Puddledumps, if I’m not mistaken? Now, there’s no need for conflict, Miss Evallina. Perhaps you and your companion might come around to my side of things, and we could have a little chat.”
Athena glanced out the corner of her eye at Reginald, who nodded. What else could they do?
Behind the trellis Wisdom Rool filled a glass-framed chair, one gnarled foot tucked up under his leg, shoes left adrift on the floor. A narrow side stair set into the wall yawned into the darkness behind him. He was not, however, dressed in his typical reeve blacks. Instead, he was stuffed into a set of Van Huffridge livery that threatened to pop open with his every move. At Athena’s look he said, “I don’t have to tell you what a challenging party this was to get into. Apparently something eventful is going to happen. Absolutely everyone who is anyone wants to be here this evening.” His empty eyes glittered. “I had to convince some poor fellow to part with his livery and then sneak—sneak, I tell you—up the back stairs.” His eyes flicked back and forth between Athena and Reggie. “But here the two of you are. Providence has certainly rewarded my lack of social graces.”
Athena licked her lips. “What do you want from us? I warn you—”
“No need for warnings, Miss Evallina.” He grinned. “Will you do me the honor of an introduction to your companion?”
Reginald cleared his throat. Or he tried to. It sounded like a frog gargling. “Reginald Shackleton, sir. My friends call me Reggie.”
Rool stood, his eyes drinking in Reginald’s features. He bowed. “A pleasure, Lord Reggie. And I am Wisdom Rool, lord captain of the king’s Reeve. We are devoted admirers of your family’s fetters.”
Reginald bowed in return, a vapid smile on his face. “Well, Evallina, you do keep some high company! I am honored. And safe! I feel safe as a babe in arms! Why did he call you Athen?”
Well done, Ruby.
Rool stepped in smoothly. “She is a student of the classics, is Evallina. Athen is, if I’m not mistaken a shortening of the name Athena. Hellenic goddess of wisdom and strategy in battle, don’t you know?”
“I—I see.”
Athena’s thoughts whirled. Why hadn’t he sounded an alarm or called the guards? But he was in disguise as well. Did he recognize Ruby? Was this all some sort of game? She moved the knife into a more defensive position. “What are you about, Lord Captain? I don’t imagine you’re the type of man that can’t bear to miss a society affair.”
“Careful, Evallina. That looks to be quite a sharp little knife. I’d hate to see you cut by it.” He smiled, a cat playing with two little mice.
Anger gave Athena strength. “But you don’t want to be seen, do you, Rool? You think you can cut me with my own knife before I cry out? And before Reggie does?”
Rool raised his eyebrow in appreciation. “You reasoned that out, did you?” His eyes narrowed. “Well, here’s a question for you. Why are you not sounding the alarm right now?”
Athena tried to keep her face smooth.
“I believe I can answer that. You are wanted by the crown, are you not? You and your friend Ruby Teach? Perhaps you have as much reason for avoiding attention as I?”
Out of nowhere Reginald Shackleton’s glove whipped out and smacked Wisdom Rool in the face.
Athena froze. Rool, ever so slowly, turned to face Reginald.
Reginald did not seem fazed in the least. “Sir, you have picked the wrong man’s escort to bait. You are a cad and a bounder, and I challenge you to defend your honor. My seconds will call upon you to arrange a time for us to meet and settle this.”
Rool was nose to nose with Reginald before Athena could blink. No time for thinking.
She stabbed upward, toward the heart.
It was a good blow, if a hand of iron was not already twisting her wrist, wrenching the blade out of her grasp. She took a breath to call out, but his two fingers struck her like a spear to a spot on her chest. She couldn’t make a sound. She could not breathe. She stumbled into the chair, barely able to stand.
In that instant Rool’s other hand had closed around Reginald’s throat. His eyes bulged.
“My honor, sir?” Wisdom Rool whispered. “You mistake your place, boy. Before this night was over, you would have known exactly what your place is, but now I fear you will discover it is six feet underground in a very fancy coffin.”
“W-w—wa-i-i-it.” Athena finally forced a whisper from her throat.
“Athena Boyle, it is quite impressive that you can make any sound at all. I will deal with you in a moment. Your friend here—”
“Not . . . friend.” Her chest ached. Red flashed at the edge of her vision. “R-R-uby.”
Rool looked at her. Then he looked at Reggie. “Truly?”
Athena could only nod.
The hand snaked out. Athena thought it was the end. Surprisingly she could breathe again. She pulled in great gouts of air.
“Don’t try to call out.” Rool’s scarred hand still circled Reginald’s throat. He peered into the boy’s eyes. “Knock, knock.”
Reginald blinked. “Who’s there?” he whispered.
“Ruby Teach?”
Reginald frowned. Then his eyes widened, and he looked about as if he had just woken from a deep sleep. “Yes. Ruby.”
“Why did you slap me, Ruby?”
“C-confused.”
Rool smiled. “And what did I give you the night you escaped?”
“R-r-rope.”
Suddenly Rool released Reginald, and he crumpled to the ground. Athena realized that his feet had been off the ground that whole time.
Rool checked the other side of the trellis to see if they were observed, then knelt to take them both in. “Well, now.”
“Lord Captain—” Reggie began to speak.
“Ruby. Athena. It truly is a pleasure to see you. The crown is after you, but I have no interest in that hunt.” He cracked his knuckles and turned to Athena. “Take this advice from someone who considers himself a kind of ally. Very soon it will be quite uncomfortable in this house, and the folk who will be filling it are not so kindly disposed to you. Whatever business you have in this place, you should do it quickly and be gone. If it is, as I overheard you say, to contact Thandie Paine, I suggest you make other plans entirely. If you are absolutely bent on self-destruction, I believe she is preparing to make an appearance shortly in the ballroom.”
Athena’s head spun, and it wasn’t just from lack of air.
Rool was moving already, back toward the staircase. He turned in the doorway.
“Well done, though, Reginald,” he said, and Ruby stared daggers at him from her stolen body. “I mean it. At least this time you didn’t turn into a pumpkin.”
And then he was gone.
CHAPTER 18
Strike first, and with all your ferocity.
—Manual of the Reeve of England
As Rool disappeared behind the flowers, a cold wave of fear washed over Ruby. Hearth had been right. The Reeve was on to all of them. Something was going to happen, something big, right here and right now. But what had just happened to her? She could remember slapping Rool, challenging him, but as if she had watched it in a theater. The memory was through this kind of terrifying veil. Ruby tried to stand, but Reginald’s ankles rolled underneath her.
Athena grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her down into the chair. “Wait. Catch your breath.”
She did. She looked down at her hands. Boy’s hands still. She hadn’t changed back. Not yet. But something was wrong. Like seasickness, but it was her mind that was at sea. Reginald’s stomach churned. He couldn’t think straight. “Ath—Evallina, I feel . . . not myself.”
Athena snorted, eyes darting. “Not surprised. You’re wearing someone else’s shape like a shabby coat.”
“Not . . . what I mean. I mean—” She tried to calm her racing pulse, tried to put what she was feeling into words. “I’m drifting. Like a boat or something. I can see me, but me doesn’t hear exactly me, if that makes any sense.”
Athena’s brows knitted in concern. “No, it doesn’t. Ruby. Ruby, you’re scaring me.”
Ruby. She was Ruby. Not Reginald. Reginald skin, Ruby heart. In her mind’s eye Ruby was indeed in a little boat, rowing out to sea. On the shore, though, there was Athena, waving her arms, and the truth started flooding back. She was at the party with her friends. To warn someone. To help. Ruby started rowing back.
“Keep it fixed in your heart,” Gwath had said.
I am Ruby. A body is just a body. It’s not me. If it acts like Reginald, who cares? I’m him. But I’m me, too. And I have to stop something from happening. How did you stop something from happening if you didn’t know what it was?
Ruby blew out through Reggie’s lips. “All right.”
Athena searched Ruby’s eyes for a moment, and her smile brought Ruby all the way back. “All right.” Athena helped her up, and they stood at the balcony searching the crowds below.
“Help me understand something,” Athena murmured.
“What is it?”
“Why would Wisdom Rool just leave us?”
Why indeed? “Perhaps he knows that what we’re doing is hopeless. Perhaps he wants us to know it.” A thought struck Ruby. “Perhaps we are part of the trap.”
“He said we should go to the ballroom.”
“If we wanted to destroy ourselves.”
“He said something was going to happen. He said Paine would be there.”
“Yes, come on. It’s the lead we have, no matter how small or perilous.” Athena’s jaw was as tight as a ship’s rigging in a hurricane as she grabbed Ruby’s wrist and hurried into the hallway. No more talk was possible as the press of party guests bore them down the stairs and into the great hall on a wave of perfume, sweat, and flowers.
The great hall of Van Huffridge House was a marvel. A cage of alloyed glass, it soared a full five stories high into the darkness. Rain from the billowing, clouded night sky spattered on its transparent panels. High above the floor of the hall hung a great chandelier, each of its hundred globes a tinker’s lamp in its own right. The guests stood shoulder to shoulder on the parquet floor, arranged in front of a stage swathed in the gray and purple of Van Huffridge House.
On the stage sat a large something hidden under a silk curtain.
But Ruby’s eyes didn’t rest for long on the curtain because they were occupied with something far more interesting and far more dangerous, a vision from her worst memories. For directly in front of her, in the place of honor on the stage, stood a man. His white greatcoat, waistcoat, and shoes fashioned an island of snow amid the color of the hall. He chatted gaily with a steward, the silvery mesh that ran down the left side of his face, from his ear to his collarbone, glittering in the chandelier’s light. In her mind she could hear the awful, cheerful gurgling tinkling of his breathing.
Dr. Emmanuel Swedenborg.
But why would the Swede be here? What kind of game was Van Huffridge playing to bring such a man into his home on the brink of revolt?
A chime rang three times, and the crowd fell silent.
A middle-aged male version of Greta Van Huffridge, knife sharp and focused as a hunting hawk, bounded onto the stage. His simple clothing stood in stark contrast with the opulence all around him, but the silence all about her told Ruby everything she needed to know. Lothor Van Huffridge was the biggest man in the room.
He stood motionless for a moment, eyes flickering across the crowd.
“Good evening,” he said. “Friends and family. Brothers and sisters of our land. Thank you for joining us this evening. It is a tender time for our people, with wolves snapping at each other out in the fields. The French and English, forever at war, it seems, have carried their conflict further into our homes.”
Uneasy whispers flitted through the crowd. Ruby desperately scanned among them, searching for a sign of something, anything out of place.
Lothor Van Huffridge smiled. “But tonight is not about conflict, dear companions. Tonight is a night of discovery! Dr. Emmanuel Swedenborg has agreed to show us something, well”—a brief smile flashed across his face—“you may have heard inklings of it coming from UnderTown. We seem to be on the edge of a massive change for our world. It sounds absolutely magical.” The crowd laughed, at ease again. Ruby had seen many great sharpers in her time, including her father and Gwath, and this man was right up among them. The people were putty in his hands. A king indeed. Van Huffridge held out a hand in invitation. “Dr. Swedenborg?”
“Thank you, sir,” Swedenborg lilted. “I hope we will not disappoint.”
“I hope not, too,” cut in Van Huffridge, and the crowd laughed again.
The doctor blinked, taken aback.
Beside Ruby, Athena’s eyes never stopped moving, searching every corner for Paine. “I don’t see her,” she whispered.
Van Huffridge smiled to Swedenborg. “Proceed.”
“Thank you.” The Swede turned to the audience. He reached up, grabbed a fistful of fabric draping the shape beside him, and pulled.
The cloth tumbled to the stage, exposing a dense basket of pipes, gears, and levers, crammed into a space about the size of a dinner table. A cloth hose emerged from one end, hanging on a hook from a kind of hat stand. Next to the whole thing sat a comfy chair, like one you might find in a rich merchant’s study.
“Behold the future.” He looked for all the world as if he were showing the assembled crowd his baby.
Ruby’s stomach churned. She knew what was coming, and she could not bear the thought of it. Her shoulders hunched.
“Is that?” Athena whispered.
Ruby nodded Reggie’s head. She couldn’t speak.
“I shall require a volunteer.” He looked out at the crowd. “Luckily many have been bravely eager to further the cause of Science.” Then he held out his hands and helped a young woman onto the stage. She was nervous, plain, and fair, in her best mended frock, certainly not a guest of the party. A seamstress perhaps or a young washerwoman.
The Swede smiled and bowed over her hand. “And what is your name, miss?”
She looked at him scared and, Ruby thought, a little mesmerized. She said something inaudible.
The Swede’s mesh jingled. “Could you speak up, please?”
Her eyes darted out to the crowd. She blushed. Her voice carried, surprisingly loud now. “Laura Bowers.” The crowd laughed, startled.
“And Laura Bowers, have we ever met before?”
“No, sir. I answered an advertisement. I—”
“Thank you. Now, Laura, if you would sit down in this comfortable chair? Good.” He presented her with the trailing end of the cloth hose, upon which lay a palm-size cup, chased with filigree. “Now, then, Miss Bowers, I would like you to place this cup over your mouth.”
She took it in her hand. “What will happen?”
“Nothing untoward. You will breathe and feel a slight pulling sensation, but then a wonderful warmth.” The Swede smiled. He gestured toward Van Huffridge, who was off to the side, leaning against an alloyed glass pillar. “The master of this house has guaranteed your safety,” he said. Van Huffridge nodded.
Laura licked her lips, then said, “Very well.” She pulled the mask over her mouth.
The Swede stalked over to the other side and flicked a series of levers. “Now, you all know that one of the great engines of our society for the last hundred years has been tinkercraft. Wonders of energy and Science have been created using the power that tinkers have harnessed for themselves.” He twirled a wheel on the machine, and it adopted a deeper hum. Laura Bowers twisted a bit in the chair and gave a small “ooh!” He gestured up at the chandelier. “Do you know, however, that the chemystral power required to keep this chandelier running is provided by the constant work of three Tinkers Guild apprentices, whose only job, night and day, is to fill the sparkstones that keep it lit? But only one in two hundred of us is a tinker, and so we are limited in the wonders we can create by our strength of will.” He moved a lever with the tip of his extended index finger. The hum deepened, and the machine began to shake. Laura Bowers’s eyebrows lifted. It was only because Ruby was watching closely that she was able to see the tiniest of veins beginning to creep down the woman’s neck from the spot right below her ears. Gorge rose in Ruby’s throat.
She hadn’t noticed the globe of the tinker’s lamp behind the chair.
She hadn’t noticed it because it hadn’t been lit, its bulb inert in the smoked glass.
But now it began to glow.
The crowd murmured.
