The Great Unravel, page 16
part #3 of Riddle in Ruby Series
The professor and the Ferret had gone on ahead. Lady Athena waited for him in the doorway. She laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Strategy, Cram. Moves within moves. One must think ahead of one’s opponent at all times.”
The words came out of his mouth before he could stop them. “It’s people, milady. Not pieces on a board.”
Athena blinked, eyes wide. She grimaced, then nodded. “I am sorry, my friend.”
Cram sighed. “Let’s get on with it then.” He followed her into the tunnel and shut the door closed behind him.
He took the crown, though.
CHAPTER 20
It is that Reflected Idol, Ambition,
that is the greatest danger to a chemyst’s soul.
—Sir Francis Bacon, Invisible College, London, 1628
They bolted through the sewers like scared rabbits, and it took no time at all for them to be lost. The tunnels twisted and turned, and Ruby tried to keep her fears at bay by imagining the cellars and storerooms they passed as they followed their course through the Lid, the great ceiling that separated the UnderTown of Philadelphi from its UpTown. It turned out that the tinkers who had pulled the stone into place over the city like a blanket had left all manner of pockets and holes inside it, as if it were a great piece of crusty bread.
They finally found a staircase that wound back upward into a coal cellar that opened onto a deserted UpTown side street. To get back to the Warren’s door, they had to go through at least part of the upper city. Bluestone Square was a terrible option, but it was their only one. With the trap sprung at Van Huffridge House, the Bluestockings had to be in danger as well, and that included Ruby’s family. With any luck the reeves were still occupied rounding up the rebels, and the crew could beat them back to the square. Fear gnawed at Ruby as they ducked and dodged through the well-gardened lanes and boarded-up shops of UpTown, avoiding patrol after patrol of soldiers and reeves that appeared as if from nowhere. Once the four of them barely ghosted past a coffeehouse, its door hanging on one hinge, a broken, flickering tinker’s lamp peeking out of broken shutters and illuminating the cobblestones. Grenadiers in their red coats wrestled bound and hooded figures out of the doorway and into yet another lockwagon.
The rain had started again, and its cool fingers trailing down her neck only heightened the urgency. She pushed ever faster, fighting down the upset stomach and the dizziness from her change. The party had been a disaster. When Van Huffridge had been shot, she had blacked out, lost in Reggie. Gwath had warned her against it, but she’d had no idea it would be like that.
Up ahead, finally, Lancaster Avenue opened into Bluestone Square. At its other end the little courtyard and the door to the secret tunnel down to the rest of her family.
They were too late.
Bluestone Square was a battlefield.
British soldiers and reeves had hunkered down behind improvised barricades in a circle twenty yards or so from the courtyard that held the tunnel entrance. Three big tinker’s lanterns, each the size of a man, blazed with the harsh white light of the Swede’s tinkercraft, picking the little gated wall out of the dark. It was peppered with gunshot holes. Just then two groups of redcoats, bayonets leveled, vaulted over the barricades and rushed toward the wall, their cries high in the distance. Ruby’s heart jumped into her throat. Two figures—Hearth in her blue mask and Marise with an unmistakable flash of blond hair—appeared above the little barrier; vials and missiles sailed through the air. They struck one of the groups full on, and the soldiers disappeared in a blanket of smoke and goo. When the vapor cleared, nothing moved on the cobblestones.
The flasks sailed wide of the other group, and the soldiers rushed on, blades gleaming.
Captain Teach and Gwath tore through the gate into the charging mass of soldiers, shrugging off clocklock fire and blades equally as if they were so much spun sugar. In moments it was over. But as soon as the last redcoat fell, volleys thundered from the surrounding barricades. A ball took Gwath in the shoulder. The captain grabbed him and hustled him back behind the wall. It was a standoff.
Silence.
The four friends looked at one another.
“What do we do?” Cram whispered.
“What can we do?” Athena shot back. “They are surrounded. There is nowhere to hide out on that square. If we try to take them from behind, the four of us against seventy, they will mow us down. Or worse, they could take us and then use us as hostages.”
“We can’t just leave them there.” Ruby started forward, but Athena caught her arm. Ruby dug her feet into the cobblestones and wrenched with all her might against Athena, but the bigger girl had her in a grip of iron. “My parents are in there!”
Henry added his hands to Athena’s. “She’s right, Ruby.”
Athena shook her. “You’ll be shot down before you get twenty feet past this corner.”
“Let go of me. Let go.” A storm of urgency thundered into her. She had lost Gwath once. Her father had been taken from her before. Her mother had never been part of her life. She had to get to them.
From his post at the corner Cram said, “Hsst.”
Something in his voice—fear or wonder or sorrow—cut through the storm. Ruby went still.
There came a far-off tinkling, like bells. The wind whirled across the cobblestones.
A shape appeared in the lantern-cast shadows at the far end of the square.
Slowly, as if it had all the time in the world, it solidified out of the mist and into the lamplight. It was a wagon of sorts, pulled by a string of piebald tin and copper chemystral goats. In the bed of the wagon, unmistakable, lay a larger version of that same engine that Ruby had seen in Van Huffridge House, a heap of tubes and pistons, gears and wires. Behind the machine gathered a score of figures, some standing huddled near the engine, some with legs dangling like children sneaking a ride on the back of a coach; but their heads were wrapped in chemystral bandages, and each of their mouths was covered by a mask, and each mask connected to a tube running back to the engine like a huge spider’s legs.
At the wagon’s front sat a little driver wearing huge quartz lenses over his eyes, swathed in a cloak far too large for him.
Gods, it was Evram.
Horror bloomed. She had thought he was done. She had left him with the Swede.
Next to him, Emmanuel Swedenborg lounged, white-clad legs crossed casually over the side. He wore a large coat with bulges rising up from the shoulders. The cart came to a stop between two of the barricades. Fear and loathing tore at Ruby. She was a fawn in the woods, and the Swede was a nightmare of a hunter, swooping in for the kill. Swedenborg stood up on the seat of the carriage. He waved a white handkerchief above his head and held up something to his mouth.
His voice boomed across the square.
“HELLO THERE. EXCUSE ME, BUT I SEEM TO BE A TOUCH LOST. COULD ANYONE DIRECT ME TO THE BURROW OF SOME TRAITORS WHO DABBLE IN CHEMYSTRY?” It echoed back and forth among the town houses. Curtains twitched as some townsfolk peeked out their windows. Storm shutters slammed closed from others. A terrible dread crawled up Ruby’s legs and into her chest.
A head popped up from behind the wall. Marise Fermat’s voice was clear but seemed infinitely small compared with the Swede’s amplified rumbling. “I’m sorry, we’re not taking callers this evening! Please come back tomorrow. We’ll set you out a nice tea!”
The Swede’s tittering laughter shook the cobblestones, the approach of a flock of giant parakeets. “AN EXCELLENT JEST, AND FROM MARISE FERMAT NO LESS. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN HIDING, MY LADY?”
“In a place where monsters like you cannot pervert the practice of chemystry.” She pointed at the machine. “That . . . monstrosity should be wiped from the face of the earth!”
“ALAS, YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THE IMPORTANCE OF THE WORK THAT WE—YOU AND I AND YOUR DEAR DAUGHTER—HAVE DONE TOGETHER. AFTER ALL, THIS IS YOUR INVENTION, MARISE. I MERELY MIDWIFED ITS BIRTH.” He patted the seat delicately, then took out a pocket watch. “I AM SORRY. THIS IS A DIVERTING CHAT, BUT I CANNOT SPEND TOO MUCH TIME CONVERSING WITH YOU. I HAVE BEEN TASKED WITH YOUR SURRENDER TO THE CROWN.” He gestured at the carnage about the square. “YOUR UPRISING HAS BEEN SQUASHED. VAN HUFFRIDGE IS SLAIN BY AN ASSASSIN, RECENTLY IDENTIFIED AS ONE ARUBA TEACH. SURRENDER YOURSELVES TO THESE SOLDIERS OR FACE THE CONSEQUENCES.”
Marise jumped atop the wall and raised her arm. “She is no assassin, and you are the traitor—to Science!” A star flashed in her fist. “I have your answer here!” Her voice disappeared in flaming thunder. A two-story-high wheel of blue chemystral fire blasted outward from the wall. It burst through a barricade like high tide through a sand castle. Soldiers dived out of the way, and the ones who were too slow turned to ash in a moment. The wheel rushed on, straight toward the Swede’s cart, a trail of blackened, smoking stone in its wake. It blasted into the wagon and exploded in a wave of fire and steam so bright it blinded Ruby. When she could see again, any relief turned to ashes in her mouth. A perfect globe of water surrounded the cart, steam rising into the night. Inside, its passengers were completely undamaged. The Swede was not burned. He had taken Marise’s blow on the chin and was smiling about it.
Spent from the chemystry, Ruby’s mother crouched on her knee atop of the wall. Ruby’s fathers and Hearth appeared, crouching above her.
Swedenborg raised his hand to his mouth again. “VERY WELL. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ANSWER. I MUST ADMIT I WAS VERY EXCITED TO TRY MY NEW SET OF TOYS.” He shrugged off his coat, revealing a braid of tubes running from his back into the machine in the wagon.
“He’s stealing the Source from those people and taking it directly into himself.” Henry sounded as if he were going to retch. “Vampire,” he said.
Evram scuttled down to the ground and flipped a switch.
The machine hummed, and strange lights flicked across its face. At the rear of the wagon, the crowd of passengers moaned and swayed in unison.
The hair on Ruby’s forearms rose up with dread.
A small, low shape raced out from the wall. It was Evie, somehow, speeding through the rubble, twin blue stars shining above her snout, hurtling toward the edge of the square.
The Swede lifted his hand like a conductor.
The entire square erupted in an explosion of earth and stone, half a hundred feet high. It hung suspended, swimming. Ruby could barely see the tunnel entrance through the hanging debris.
The Swede flicked his fingers.
The curtain of earth raced forward with a roar. Figures squirmed and struggled back toward the tunnel entrance like ants hurrying for their hill, but they would never make it in time. They were done. All of them.
The curtain stopped.
The tons of stone, impossibly, bounced back up into the sky, held at bay by a tiny bubble of air and chemystry surrounding the little courtyard.
A single shape knelt atop the wall as the others ran for the tunnel. Marise Fermat, her hand upraised in refusal. In her other hand lay a locket. It was the compass, the chemystral device her mother had used to track her across the continent. Something tore open in Ruby’s chest. At that moment, when all was lost, she was looking for Ruby. Marise turned toward her daughter. They locked eyes, and Ruby saw something there that she had never allowed herself to see. It was love. Not the kind from the stories, and not what Ruby got from her fathers, but it was there. Marise smiled and raised the hand with the locket to Ruby, as if to say good-bye.
The Swede cried out in anger, clenched his fist, and slammed it toward the earth.
The rock wave smote down, smashing through the bubble and into the tunnel entrance with a titanic roar.
Ruby cried out again, but her voice could not compete with the shredding of bedrock.
When the dust cleared, in place of the little courtyard stood a tower of rubble and debris. Nothing else.
“WELL, THAT WAS EXCITING.”
The wagon turned about and drove off the way it came, leaving behind a field of death.
Ruby struggled in Athena’s rigid arms, but it was all for naught. The others might have escaped far enough into the tunnels, but not her mother. A mountain of earth and stone lay piled atop of what had been the entrance to the Warren. Ruby sank to the ground.
Evie came into her arms, chittering softly.
Ruby did not move.
Her friends lifted her up by her arms. They dragged her away.
Through the haze of rage and loss and disbelief she heard Henry say, “We must get to Fermat.”
CHAPTER 21
WANTED
For crimes against the crown, including
ASSASSINATION and TREASON
The SCOURGE OF PHILADELPHI has Returned
The most Clever, Strange, and Dangerous Aruba Teach
also known as Ruby Teach has Struck Again!
Of dark complexion, small stature and
with features fox like (as drawn below)
READY MONEY REWARD FOR HARD NEWS
Inquire at Benzene Yards, Building 221
Henry tore the poster from the alley wall. “How do they get these up so quickly?”
“They must have some sort of midnight print shop somewhere,” said Athena.
She crumpled it up, dropped it in the muck, and stamped on it. She looked as frazzled and lost as Henry felt. Marise—how could anyone have survived that?
Athena cursed. “Here we are again then. On the run, with no friends, in Philadelphi.” She tugged at the stolen overcoat, which did very little to obscure her dress, and looked back down the alley.
Henry followed her gaze to where Ruby sat on a box, staring into nothing, Cram trying to get her to eat a piece of cheese out of his bag. The ottermaton, Evie, hanging out of a pocket of Ruby’s coat, was batting at the cheese with singular intensity. Ruby had been nearly spent before Swedenborg dropped a square on her mother; now she hovered in a strange half emptiness between there and nowhere that Henry liked not at all.
He snuck a peek over his shoulder across the alley to a narrow door tucked between two huge bakeries, to a little window with a scale brimming with spices. “Well, I hope not no friends.”
Athena glided up next to him. “Are you certain of this? I know that you’ll be welcome, but the last time we were here, I—”
The rest of her sentence was cut off by a massive pair of chem whistles, blasting into the once silent night. Before you could count five heartbeats, the cobblestones were awash with people. The doors of both bakeries thudded open, vomiting a tide of workers into the narrow street. Flour-covered men and women trudged, feet dragging and hunched, toward the end of the street and the stairs to UnderTown, a procession of ghosts filing past another, cleaner crowd surging up the street toward the bakeries for the coming shift. Apparently it took more than a botched uprising to stop the gears of Philadelphi industry.
“Cram!” Henry called as softly as he could. “It’s time!”
Cram already had Ruby up, and the two of them moved forward, his arm protectively over her shoulders and his eyes everywhere.
“With the stream, not faster or slower, and follow me when I switch.” Henry tapped Cram on the top of his head. “And keep this down.”
With that he grabbed Athena by the hand and shouldered into the stream of workers. It was an old dance, one he hadn’t done in months. The old man, Fermat, had gone on unceasingly about secrecy. Henry had been allowed to come and go to this, his place of apprenticeship, only during the shift changes at the bakeries. “Clothe yourself in the masses,” Fermat had said, and Henry had taken those lessons to heart. It had not passed without notice for him that even through all the spying on the navy and the tinkers that he had done for the old chemyst, it was only when Henry took up with his three friends that he had encountered a series of mishaps that would apparently never end. He fell into line behind a middle-aged woman, the rough-spun cloth on her shoulder barely showing through the thick layer of flour caked atop it. The flour cloud from the bakeries hung thick in the air, like morning mist, covering everyone in a snow of off white.
He glided toward the center of the street until all the people to his left were passing in the other direction, back toward the bakeries and the spice shop. He could sense Athena moving behind him, and he had to assume Cram and Ruby were following. He could not risk a glance back. The true nature of Fermat’s little spice shop had been divulged to the Warren almost a year ago, and with the unmasking of the Bluestockings fresh in his mind, who knew what eyes were still watching?
The four friends weaved and nudged their way through the crowd until they grouped up behind Henry at the spice shop door. Once they had landed, the stream of workers slid grimly around them. Cram’s black eyes stuck out against the cake of flour, and Ruby still stared at the ground.
Henry knocked at the door.
Once.
Twice quick.
Then three times regular.
It had been the pass knock during his apprenticeship, and he dearly hoped it had not changed.
A shadow passed across the little window.
Locks twisted and rattled.
The thick door opened slowly, and they tumbled in, desperately trying to appear nonchalant.
Behind them the door closed with a hiss and a pop, and then Nasira was there, lifting him in the air like a child.
He was home.
Hands like hickory wrapped around his shoulders and moved him out to arm’s length. The bald woman peered at him out of a sun-leathered field of wrinkles, and she flashed a smile. “Welcome, boy. You have been sorely missed.”
He grinned so hard that he thought his face might break. He could not help himself. Even through all the sorrow that he had so recently seen, through all the trouble and hardship, it was so good to see her.
“Nasira, I believe you know my friends?” He took special care to emphasize the word. Nasira was a fierce guardian. It would not do to have anyone falling down pits today.
Relief washed over him when Nasira smiled at the lot of them. “Of course, of course! Any friend of Henry’s is a friend of ours, even if we have had our quarrels in the past.”
